I’ve covered and watched school boards, county commissioners and city councils for more than 25 years.

During that time, I’ve watched people speak during public comments, often to no avail, so much so that most people do not bother with it.

Still, a citizen in our democratic republic admires those who do speak up. To be influential, a person has to say the right word to the right person at the right time. Often, making a public comment at a governmental meeting is as good of an opportunity as a person gets, or at least it should be.

Sometimes over the years, people have asked me how to be more effective in persuading elected representatives to see things their way. I typically suggest that they bring more people with them when they attend public meetings.

It’s one thing for an elected official to hear from one person. It’s another to hear from 10 or 20, because those 10 or 20 have influence with friends and family members. Elected officials know that votes matter. Votes got them where they are, seated at the decision-makers’ table.

I’ve watched a lot of meetings. Rarely, if ever, have I seen an elected body – school board, county commissioners, city council – fail to be swayed by a room full of voters who urge them to do something differently.

Yet, that’s what happened July 13 at the Lincoln County Commissioners meeting.

By a slim majority, 3-2, the commissioners stuck with previous votes against the prevailing sentiments. They did not declare a moratorium — a pause — in the potential development of the data centers in our county.

I realize the commissioners have given the subject considerable thought and have reasons for voting the way they did. But nevertheless, sometimes they must clearly represent the wishes of their constituents. They are there to study the issues, bring their best judgement to bear, and represent their constituents.

A pause would have allowed the public more time to reason together, instead of goading those who are most alarmed about the rapid development of large-scale data centers to hop on the train of the opposition and find fulfillment in loudly criticizing.

Alarm bells

There are reasons for opposing data centers. Their explosive development has caught most of the country, including Lincoln County, by surprise. In our county, a comprehensive, three-year update of the county’s planning and zoning regulations, recently completed, did not even foresee the data center explosion.

More data centers will generate more artificial intelligence. Some people think we have enough of it already. AI is affecting most everything we do. It has the potential to change our ways of life as powerfully and quickly as money can move from one investment banker to another.

Investors, hoping to capitalize long-term on the demand for artificial intelligence, are pushing to building data centers, which many of us are rooted in the time, not long ago, before AI.

A PEW survey in March found 40% of people, including young adults, think AI will have a detrimental effect on society. Only 16% think it will be beneficial.

AI ignores copyrights, taking information where it can be found, passing it along without crediting the author, in violation of a longstanding set of personal rights. AI trainers are going so far as to buy the rights to books, feed the contents into AI data banks, and destroy the original books.

Just the day that I wrote this, I talked with someone who received advertisements on their smart phone for a product they only talked about buying. They never conducted an internet search. It was as though the phone was listening. Many people are certain that phones have the capability. The number of unsolicited robot phone calls that we receive, pushing products or scams, is accelerating. We do not ask for those calls. They arrive because someone captured our data.

When that stuff happens, people see detriments, not value. Unprompted ads and phone calls feed fears of a surveillance state. If our talk can be monitored 24-7, what we think, say and do could be used by those who would profit from it.

That situation is a long way from the right of personal privacy that has repeatedly been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court for several decades. Routine violations of privacy, which are illegal searches and seizures of information, is a step toward authoritarian control. It’s no wonder so many people are worried about Flock cameras.

There are other reasons — even more than protecting our privacy — to proceed cautiously in construction of more data centers. Tapping the brakes in Lincoln County would give us a chance to come to grips with what’s going on.

And that’s what the majority of people in the overflowing commissioners’ room wanted — more time to consider.

This opinion was first published in the Bulletin’s July 22 print edition.

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