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Legislative panel weighs in on children’s mental health, data centers and state vs. local control

Posted in Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce, Daily Herald, Data Center, Democratic Socialists of America, Dinky, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Economy, Education, Elections, Ethics, New Normal?, Politics, Property Taxes, Resident Spotlights, School Districts, Springfield, Taxes on September 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

By Steve Zalusky | Daily Herald

A panel of Republican and Democratic state legislators came together Wednesday in Barrington to discuss a variety of topics, including the impact of social media and technology on children’s mental health and whether data centers should be under state or local control.

Two Republicans, state Rep. Martin McLaughlin and state Sen. Darby Hills, both of Barrington Hills, and two Democrats, state Reps. Nabeela Syed of Inverness and Anna Moeller of Elgin, fielded questions during the Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast, held at the Barrington Park District headquarters.

Barrington Area Unit District 220 Superintendent Craig Winkelman, one of the moderators, asked what role the state should play in helping school districts support children’s mental health.

He cited figures provided by Lurie Children’s Hospital that 49% of Illinois youth are experiencing worsening mental health.

Syed, who represents the 51st District, said the state has taken action by passing a law mandating mental health screenings in schools, with parents able to opt out.

McLaughlin, who represents the 52nd District, echoed Syed on the impact of technology but focused less on what the state can do and more on channeling children into activities that encourage social interaction and team building.

“You cannot spell team with ‘I,’ but you can certainly spell ‘iPhone,’ with an ‘I,’” he said.

Panelists also weighed in on data centers.

McLaughlin criticized the governor and the Democratic majority for passing hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to attract data centers. He said he supports local communities retaining zoning and planning controls.

Although he agreed data centers are needed, he said, “That doesn’t mean that we should stick data centers in Algonquin next to residents in Barrington Hills, which I oppose. That doesn’t mean we should put data centers across the street from South Barrington residential units, which I oppose.”

Read the full article here.

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Editorial: The AI vultures are monetizing the dead. Your old emails might be worth millions.

Posted in AI, Chicago Tribune, Data Center, OP/Ed, Privacy on August 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Spirit Airlines data has never been more valuable | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

If you recently left a job, it’s likely you lost access to your old inbox and the saved records of those tedious Zoom or Teams meetings. Leaving such digital detritus behind now is part of life. But we doubt you anticipated your employer being able to make money from what you had to say while gainfully employed.

Consider what just happened with the remains of what used to be Spirit Airlines, the bankrupt ultra-low-cost air carrier. Earlier this month, Google was the winner of a highly competitive auction not for the dead airline’s planes or equipment but for the corpse’s data trove. Reportedly, the treasure included 100 million emails and 500 million Teams messages, not to mention a ton of lines of code.

Why did Google blow $10 million on such seeming scrap? To train its artificial intelligence agents.

We’ll try not to get too in the weeds here, but in essence the Spirit purchase was like buying a massive business-school case study with bots as the intended students.

By seeing what humans did in actual life, the AI creepy-crawlies can learn about, well, what humans did in actual life. It doesn’t matter if they did what they did well (and, in the case of Spirit, it all failed in the end). It’s all about using this specific business as a way for AI to learn how an airline actually operates in real life or, yet more generally, how humans typically work together in organizations.

And you thought those AI agents were merely ingesting books and newspapers. Nope. They are looking at your old out-of-office replies and ill-considered rants on Teams.

Read on here.

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‘Not 1984’: Flock cameras watching millions of Americans spark bipartisan revolt

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Cell Towers, Clown Car, Data Center, Deception, Flock Cameras, Fox News, One Barrington Hills, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Transparency, VBHPD on August 26, 2026| 1 Comment »

A pigeon perches on a Flock Safety camera, mounted high on a traffic signal pole at the intersection of Chapman Avenue & Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove, Calif., on Aug. 14, 2026. | Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

By Elizabeth Elkind, Alex Miller | Fox News

There’s a new frontier in the national privacy debate that’s uniting people on the right and left, and it’s a tool that millions of Americans encounter every day without even realizing it.

Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies have been brought under scrutiny by lawmakers in Washington as privacy hawks warn that the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is testing the bounds of what ALPR devices can legally learn about drivers on the road.

One company in particular, Flock Safety, has been taking hits in the media and political sphere as news of Flock cameras’ misuse — and occasional success — dominates headlines.

“There’s cameras everywhere, people know that, but if law enforcement has the ability to monitor the comings and goings of citizens, I think that’s wrong. I mean, we’re not the CCP, we’re not 1984 and an Orwellian society, and Americans have rights,” Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital.

LICENSE PLATE CAMERAS ARE TRACKING DRIVERS EVERYWHERE

He pointed to a recent incident in his district where a now-former Sarasota police officer was fired and arrested after being accused of misusing Flock camera technology, using it to spy on one particular license plate over 300 times.

FLOCK SAFETY CAMERAS NEED CONSTITUTIONAL GUARDRAILS BEFORE FURTHER DEPLOYMENT, TENNESSEE MAYOR ARGUES

“I don’t think you’re gonna be able to stop these cameras from being out there, but at the very least, there should be some type of legal parameters put in place to protect people’s Fourth Amendment rights,” he said.

ALPRs automatically capture and analyze vehicle and location data on public roads without drivers’ consent. Supporters have argued that it’s a critical tool for public safety that only collects minimal information, while opponents labeled it an alarming expansion of the mass surveillance state.

LICENSE PLATE CAMERAS AT HOME DEPOT AND LOWE’S SPARK PRIVACY FEARS

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital, “These cameras are well beyond an automated license plate reader today. AI has made them so capable that they are now capable of facial recognition, of seeing what you’re doing inside your car. So it’s well beyond the license plate reader…that’s the problem. Technology has moved these beyond just looking at the back of a car.”

On the other side of the aisle, a spokesperson for progressive Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., pointed Fox News Digital to her recent comments responding to news that Flock was updating its oversight standards. Ramirez wrote on X, “Private tech companies have amassed record-breaking profits off our pain and the use of technology for mass surveillance is a threat to our democracy, civil liberties, and privacy. Congress must stop the ever-expanding surveillance state.”

The debate even exploded onto the campaign trail ahead of November’s midterm elections, where ALPRs join AI data centers as Big Tech’s big boogeymen.

Article continues here.

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Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Cellular Service, Data Center, Ethics, Politics, Privacy, Public Safety, The New Normal?, WIRED on August 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. | Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images

By Dhruv Mehrotra | WIRED

Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.

Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.

The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own.

The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.

Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country.

Privacy and legal experts say Flock’s tools already raise serious constitutional concerns by giving police broad, often warrantless access to a vast record of people’s movement. But the prompts WIRED examined go further, turning a tool for finding a known vehicle into one that casts suspicion on drivers based on where and how often they drive, regardless of whether they are wanted for a crime.

Article continues here.

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Flock camera map: How many are in your neighborhood?

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Data Center, Privacy, Public Safety, Transparency, WGN9 on August 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A Flock Safety camera is shown mounted to a light pole on August 03, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By Spencer Gustafson, Alix Martichoux | WGN9 News

Flock Safety, a surveillance equipment company, says it partners with more than 5,000 law enforcement agency partners across 6,000 communities. Is your city one of them (answered here)?

The Flock cameras are solar-powered license plate readers that collect data as they record. Agencies that partner with Flock can then search the database for license plate numbers, car make and models, or identifying features like bumper stickers.

Proponents argue the cameras help law enforcement solve crimes, but critics say they data could be misused to track anyone, even those not accused of crimes, with little oversight.

“They’re just collecting data as an active surveillance system, and every car that passes through, the data is collected from that car license plate, using AI. They make a vehicle fingerprint of the car that includes distinguishing features, make, model, color, bumper stickers, roof racks, all these different things,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs in an interview with NewsNation.

“And then it’s retained for sometimes 30 days or more and then in a searchable database, which really turns the whole concept of a license plate reader on its head in that they’re not looking for one specific vehicle or specific vehicles. They’re just pulling everything in.”

Founder Garrett Langley said his surveillance equipment manufacturing company started out of frustration with crime rates in his home city of Atlanta.

“Crime felt too easy to get away with,” Langley said during a TED talk in April. “It didn’t make sense that you could steal someone’s car … or you could kill someone and have a 50 percent chance of getting away with it. … So I did what engineers do. I built a license plate-reading camera.”

How can I check the location of Flock cameras?

According to Flock, nearly 100,000 cameras are in place across more than 6,000 communities in 49 states. The company, however, doesn’t have a detailed list of camera locations publicly available.

That’s where DeFlock comes in. The organization says it wants to raise awareness about automatic license plate readers and “the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties.”

DeFlock maintains a crowd-sourced map showing the alleged location of Flock cameras around the U.S. “Camera locations come from volunteers and the OpenStreetMap community, not a private company or government agency,” DeFlock says. Nexstar could not independently verify the camera locations.

You can zoom into the map below (ACTUALLY, to open the map below in a new tab, click here) to explore the reported locations of cameras in your neighborhood, according to DeFlock’s crowdsourced data.

The map includes cameras made by other tech companies, not just Flock.

Report continues along with video and survey here.

Related: “What are Flock cameras and where are they in the Chicago area? What to know”

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PJM’s big new data center plan: Make the states figure it out

Posted in AI, Capitol News Illinois, Data Center, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, Politics, Property Taxes, Unions on August 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A data center owned by Amazon Web Services, front right, is under construction next to the Susquahanna nuclear power plan in Berwick, PA on Jan. 14, 2025. | AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey

By Jeff St. John and Canary Media | Capitol News Illinois

PJM Interconnection, the biggest grid operator in the U.S., has finally settled on a plan to prevent data centers from causing other customers’ utility bills to soar further in its 13-state territory.

That plan relies heavily on states themselves, and the utilities they regulate, to force data centers to secure their own power supplies — or face the possibility of getting their power cut off during grid emergencies.

Last week, PJM’s board of managers sent proposals along these lines to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which must grant the grid operator permission before it can implement the new plan for its system, which serves about 67 million people from Virginia to Illinois. The multipart plan is PJM’s attempt to quiet down months of mounting pressure from state governors and the Trump administration to contain skyrocketing costs while staying within its regulatory limits.

“Historically, PJM has been very nervous to step into what it considered — or what are legally — the states’ rights,” said Julia Hoos, who leads coverage of Eastern U.S. power markets for Aurora Energy Research. But with its new proposals, PJM is “making a definitive request to the states to accomplish what it needs.”

PJM forecasts that data centers and other “large loads” will add 30 gigawatts to 34 gigawatts of new demand by the early 2030s and as much as 70 GW by 2038. Building enough new energy resources to meet that demand would push enormous costs onto utility customers.

State lawmakers and environmental and consumer advocates have been demanding that PJM instead require that new data centers get cut off from the grid when electricity demand is especially high, unless those facilities can pay for and build the resources required to keep them online.

But states, not PJM, are in charge of deciding which customers can connect to the grids operated by state-regulated utilities. That constraint played a role in PJM backing off last year’s proposal to create a “non-capacity-backed load” program to force new large loads to submit to being cut off during grid emergencies. Data center industry groups and other stakeholders warned that the plan could face legal challenges.

PJM’s new proposal, dubbed the Interim Resource Adequacy Service, or IRAS, largely re-creates that structure, only with states and utilities as the primary responsible parties, said Tom Rutigliano, senior advocate for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In that sense, “it’s almost like they got to not too far off from where they started,” he said.

Article continues here.

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Proposed East Dundee annexation deal would allow future data center

Posted in AI, Data Center, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, News Media, Real Estate on August 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

By Gloria Casas | The Courier-News/Chicago Tribune/Daily Herald

A proposed agreement under which 74 acres of property would be annexed into East Dundee includes a provision that would allow a data center to be among its future development options.

Plote Properties has no immediate plans to build on the site, located west of Beverly Road and south of Route 72, officials said. The annexation agreement is “still in negotiations,” Village President Dan Pearson said.

The land is part of a larger 253-acre parcel owned by East Dundee-based Plote, a portion of which was annexed into the village in January 2025 and zoned for manufacturing so that Plote could continue its mining operations and have space for truck parking.

Under the proposed annexation agreement, the village would agree to create a tax increment financing (TIF) district for the area.

The agreement for the eastern portion of the land is similar to the one for the western portion approved in 2025 — with a few additional provisions, Assistant Village Attorney Stew Weiss said at a public hearing for the deal held as part of a recent village board meeting.

One provision would require the village to provide financial incentives for the development of the full 253 acres, Weiss said. A “qualifying development,” or any development of 100,000 square feet or larger, could receive a 25% reimbursement for TIF-eligible expenses, an electricity tax rebate of 25% and an electricity tax freeze for a 20-year term, according to the agreement under discussion.

The agreement will detail the scope and nature of the proposed development incentives, lay out how a “qualifying development” is defined, and establish development performance standards for future uses, including data centers.

The proposed M-1 zoning designation would allow for several permitted “future uses” and “would require no additional zoning relief” if Plote wants to use it for a data center, electrical substation, accessory use facility or high-voltage transmission line at a height of 300 feet. Data centers are allowed in M-1 districts.

Read more here.

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Data centers have moved into rural America. So have the concerns.

Posted in AI, Capitol News Illinois, Data Center, Land Use, Politics, Public Safety, Springfield on July 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A schematic drawing shows how a Hub 8 data center site near Latham in rural Logan County might look. The project, still seeking approval, has faced pushback. | Courtesy Hub 8 Corp

New survey results show rural residents are more worried than urban and suburban Americans about the impacts of data centers, especially when it comes to electricity costs and the changing use of farmland, as AI infrastructure expands.

By Lauren Cross | Investigate Midwest

Data center construction is shifting toward rural America. At the same time, rural residents report greater concern than urban and suburban Americans about what those projects could mean for their electricity costs and farmland use.

That’s according to a survey released June 26 by researchers at the University of Illinois and Purdue University. The survey of about 1,000 U.S. adults, conducted in February, found rural residents expressed the highest average level of concern overall. Their greatest concern was rising electricity costs, followed by the use of agricultural land for data centers and overuse of water.

“Many unknowns remain about the full impacts associated with data center growth and expansion,” according to researchers.

By 2030, the energy requirements for data centers are projected to more than double in Illinois and triple in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, researchers added, citing the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

According to a separate April analysis of mapping data by the Pew Research Center, a major shift is underway. Nearly 90% of all existing data centers are in urban areas, but 67% of planned facilities are slated for rural communities and 39% are planned in counties without an existing data center.

Report continues here.

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Proposed 185-Acre Data Center in Hoffman Estates by Karis Critical Cancelled as Firm Bows Out

Posted in AI, BACOG, Cook, County, Data Center, EJ&E/Canadian National, FPDCC, Hoffman Estates, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, News Media, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Real Estate, Resident Spotlights, School Districts, South Barrington, Taxes, Topics Of Interest, Unions on July 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Courtesy Construction Review

By Joel Mairura | Construction Review

The proposed 185-acre data center in Hoffman Estates by Karis Critical has been cancelled as the firm bows out. The firm has withdrawn its request to rezone land for the controversial data center project in Illinois. Its scope entailed being constructed at the edge of the village of Hoffman Estates’ municipal boundaries. Moreover, it would have bordered the nearby areas of South Barrington and Barrington Hills.

However, it raised serious questions about how the neighboring towns, which have no official say in decision making, are impacted by such projects (?). “After several weeks of conversations with the Village and residents, we’ve decided the right step is to withdraw the current rezoning request,” Karis Critical spokesman Patrick Skarr said.

“We heard the feedback clearly, including the call for a more specific plan before any rezoning. We’ll take the time to get that right. Should we bring a proposal forward in the future, the Village and the community will have the details they need to evaluate it fully and on its merits.” Residents have always been against the project as shown by a recent public hearing where they showed up in numbers. Despite bowing out, other data centers across the US are still advancing such as “Project Marvel” in Bessemer which QTS has been identified as its developer.

The proposed 185-acre data center in Hoffman Estates by Karis Critical has been cancelled as the firm bows out. | Courtesy Construction Review

Factors Leading to Opposition of Proposed Data Center in Hoffman Estates

One of the major factors that led to opposition of the proposed data center in Hoffman Estate was transparency concerns. When the Plan Commission held its meeting, discussion was limited to the issue of rezoning the site from traditional neighborhood and commercial mixed-use districts to a manufacturing district. Moreover, residents were told there were no specific site plans for a data center project.

Other residents had concerns about the impacts of a large-scale data center on traffic, noise and light pollution and air quality. Hoffman Estates has two other data centers under construction. However, they are in areas already zoned for manufacturing that residents said are more appropriate than the residential area near forest preserves.

“Nobody here is saying, ‘Don’t do a data center,’ everyone’s saying, ‘Don’t do it here,’” Barrington Hills resident Karen Trzaska said. A public records request seeking communication from village stuff about the project also revealed much. It noted that the project had been in discussion as early as 18 months ago, raising more concerns on the project’s transparency.

Article continues here.

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“Petitioner withdraws rezoning application for Plum Farms property”

Posted in BACOG, Data Center, EJ&E/Canadian National, FPDCC, Goat Rodeo, Hoffman Estates, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, Plum Farm development, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Real Estate, School Districts, South Barrington, Taxes, Unions on July 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Per a Village of Hoffman Estates release:

“On June 30, 2026, H.E. Holdings, LLC, owner of the property at 4800 W. Higgins Road, (commonly known as “Plum Farms” and hereafter referred to as the ‘Subject Property’) notified the Village of Hoffman Estates in writing that it has withdrawn its application to rezone the three lots that comprise the Subject Property to the Village’s M-2 zoning district. As a result of this withdrawal, the existing zoning of the Subject Property will remain in place (Lot 1: TN, Lots 2 & 3: C-MU).

The withdrawn petition for rezoning will not be considered by the Village Board at the July 6, 2026, Village Board Meeting. Any application for zoning changes to the Subject Property by the current or future owners will require a new application. Future applications concerning the Subject Property will be required to start at the beginning of the zoning amendment process outlined in the Village Code.

The public hearing scheduled for July 6, 2026, to consider the termination of the annexation agreement governing the property at 4800 W. Higgins Road, Hoffman Estates, has been canceled.”

Source

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