In a city called The Dalles, in Oregon, USA, local people were worried that Google’s water use was soaring. As is so often the case, the city officials, who had given Google hundreds of millions in tax breaks, had no intention of letting anyone know how much water Google was using. It was up to a local paper, The Oregonian, to try and find out. They were forced to bring a case to court. City officials were ordered by Google to claim that Google’s use of scarce pubic water was a “trade secret”.
Democratic rights have become a Big Tech trade secret. Google imposed a gag order on city officials elected by the public, warning them that they must not tell the public anything about the Google project, particularly how much public water Google was taking. Using a slew of aliases to buy land, getting secret tax breaks, getting electricity at less than half of what ordinary people pay, being sold public land for less than half the market value, all in secret, this is how Big Tech rolls.
@dalias@alcinnz And fiber, and water pipes, and staff who have to come in and go home each day, and cooling towers, air intakes, generators and fuel tanks.
@freakazoid@dalias@alcinnz I approve the halting of the plundering of public resources by civil unrest, as well as public shaming of those engaged in or enabling it.
2024: "Holy motherfucking shit, have you tried snorting pure uncut evil off a stripper's ass? Got-DAMN, come over here, you gotta try this shit! GYATT!" :02smug:
After more than a year in court, city officials were forced to tell their own citizens how much public water Google was using. “But most troubling in the affair,” Binoy Kampmark wrote for Scoop in 2023, “leaving aside the lamentable conduct of public officials, was the willingness of a private company to bankroll a state entity in preventing access to public records.” This is the type of surveillance capitalism top secret future that Big Tech is implementing for all of us.
Making public officials promise that if any taxpayers file official requests for information, Google will be the first to know, this is how our democracy is stolen. Every day, we sell our democracy and basic rights to Big Tech for convenience, “cheap” data storage, some always-on entertainment and a few “free” services. We sell ourselves and our environment so cheap.
@gerrymcgovern This is how fascism starts. And no, it's not an exaggeration; check the role of Krupps, BMW, Volkswagen, Bayer, and Commerzbank, for example, in supporting and having secret agreements with the German government during the 1930's and all the way to 1945. If private companies can operate in secret, evading public scrutiny on deals involving public property and consequences for the general public, then...you don't have a democracy anymore.
The State and Big Tech, working hand-in-hand, to suppress citizen rights. Big Tech knows everything about us. We know nothing about them. Google’s bullyboy, arrogant, untouchable, imperious tactics were not over. In 2024, David Wren writing for The Post and Courier, warned that in Dorchester County, USA, the amount of public water Google was demanding “to cool computer server farms and other equipment it plans to build is a closely guarded "trade secret."
@anne_twain@gerrymcgovern Water rights in the US are regionally determined and can be really strange. It's not always a public resource. Some laws are even "hands tied" by agreements made a hundred, or more, years ago. Check out the documentary "Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008)" to see how corporations are trying to lay claim to "public" resources. It's really amazing the noose people will willingly put their own necks into.
@gerrymcgovern It's even worse than this suggests — rather than the Oregonian suing for access, the city of The Dalles actually sued The Oregonian in a "reverse public records lawsuit" to prevent the paper from disclosing the data, despite their county District Attorney having already ruled that the information should be disclosed.
Google funded the suit until the press got too bad and then pulled out, so the city settled.
@gerrymcgovern@mhoye Wondering if I could get away with that at a job. Just do something totally unexpected and with zero regard for anyone around me and if anyone starts to ask questions, just tell them that no one had been told previously because it was my trade secret.
@mhoye@gerrymcgovern Just reminded that this is almost always the start of people with crazy wealth: First, get some seed money of $1,000,000-$100,000,000 from your family.
Next, be lauded years later by the media as being a self-made billionaire.
@lin11c They play one poor or ambitious region against another. They are constantly on the look out for tax loopholes, anything to avoid. They try and subcontract and outsource where possible, anything to avoid decent jobs because decent jobs hurts their voracious hunger for more profits, more power.
Big Tech--the most powerful companies in the world--are on corporate welfare. Always with their greedy hands out for more, more, more. No wonder they trade in secrecy.
@gerrymcgovern
I know!! It drive me crazy! I wonder it these politicians get kickbacks. That seems to be the only thing they care about these days. The corruption really is that bad now.
@acm_redfox
Yes I know, that is the claim. I know in NYC what they were getting in tax breaks was much greater than the "jobs" they were bringing. They still snuck in somehow.
@rothko@gerrymcgovern
These mega corps lie about how many jobs are actually created. With AI, forget about jobs. They will need even more water and power to run that machine. Once they are embedded in the community they will hide information and control litigation. No way to fight them and their limitless funds.
@rothko
And the weird thing about data centers is that they bring hardly any jobs, maybe 20-50 for a typical large data center, and lots of those jobs are low paying contract or security work. It's a scam.
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