* NBC Chicago…

The CEO of T5 , a development company set to build what could eventually become the second largest data center in Illinois by square footage, spoke exclusively to NBC 5 Monday amid an outcry of opposition from local residents.
[…]

In a statement, Grayslake mayor Elizabeth Davies says there were 18 public meetings and “Every one of those meetings and hearings was open to the public, publicly noticed, and on the record.”

The village has put out a fact sheet online assuring residents the project won’t increase power bills, and will bring in $1.4 billion in tax revenue over the next 20 years. […]

[T5 CEO Peter Marin] says the Grayslake data center will operate on a closed-loop system, which means it will rely more on power than water to cool the computer servers inside. […]

Marin says T5 has a separate rate agreement with ComEd, and will be effectively paying for all the power it consumes, but coalition members say they aren’t buying that argument.

* CBS Chicago…

Residents said the [village of Grayslake] didn’t start sharing information on the project until they started protesting, forming the Lake County Data Center Opposition Coalition.

CBS News Chicago Investigators contacted the village to address those concerns. They got back to us after our story first aired ith a statement.

A memo posted to their website says “due to notice of filed litigation and upon advice of counsel” the village won’t address questions. […]

[Hannah Harris] said as soon as she learned more, she started attending village meetings. But at that point, the project had been approved.

“We had to fight to get any kind of response,” she said.

* WTTW…

At last Wednesday’s City Council meeting, alderpeople voted to remove exemptions for data centers from the city’s Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. That move — a key recommendation from the city’s working group on sustainable data centers — is intended to provide transparency around data centers’ energy efficiency and water usage.

But despite the support for benchmarking requirements, City Council members failed to get behind other proposed data center regulations — including a moratorium.

In August, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order addressing noise controls and air pollution permitting for data centers. Johnson’s order also called on alderpeople to enact a temporary moratorium on new data center development.

That moratorium, introduced Wednesday, would have applied to data centers bigger than 1,000 square feet with more than 20% of their floor space dedicated to servers. But its fate is uncertain, after two alderpeople promptly routed it to the Rules committee upon its introduction. […]

While the Data Center Coalition opposes the moratorium, [Brad Tietz] said the industry group did not oppose the mayor’s executive order, or the benchmarking requirements the City Council approved last week.

* WCIA…

The village of Mahomet was approached by clean cloud energy for a data center. Clean cloud energy are planning data centers across the country. And village officials say they are willing to hear them out. Especially if this could provide a boost to infrastructure in the community.

The Village President of Mahomet said in written statement the village has a responsibility to consider economic opportunities. Many communities have temporary moratoriums on projects like this while they work through the process of regulating them. But some community members say the news is troubling. […]

“It’s all about commercial tax base,” said Village President Jason Tompkins.

Tompkins says if you expand that commercial tax base. The demand is now lower for homeowners to pay, benefiting schools and libraries in town. A that option is something he said he has to consider. […]

He said the location of the data center will play a big role on if it comes to town, Depending on the locations jurisdiction between the village and the county.

* Chicago Reader…

Federal authorities tapped into a network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and surveillance cameras operated by Chicagoland police while trying—ultimately unsuccessfully—to prosecute Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ruiz for interfering with immigration agents last year, according to court records reviewed by the Reader.

Prosecutors accessed hundreds of photos of Martinez and Ruiz from Flock Safety ALPRs in at least five Chicago suburbs in addition to footage from police observation device (POD) cameras in the City of Chicago.

It’s not immediately clear how federal officials obtained the Flock and POD data, but a lawyer involved in the case told the Reader they didn’t believe the information was subpoenaed, indicating that local police likely turned it over voluntarily—or the feds already had access to it. […]

“It’s pretty common that the digital surveillance technologies that are available to local police will obviously be used in federal prosecutions, especially federal prosecutions in a city largely dominated by local police,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a George Washington University law professor and author of Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. “It’s also somewhat potentially troubling for people—because it is common—that these technologies are essentially being deployed under one rationale and might be used for another.”

* More…

* Lake & McHenry County Scanner | Grayslake issues first permit for construction to begin on mega data center campus as lawsuit seeks to block development: Last month, a lawsuit was filed by the Preservation of Community Well-being Collective LLC and nine Lake County residents in Lake County Circuit Court challenging the Village of Grayslake’s approvals of the T5 @ Chicago IV data center campus. The complaint names the Village of Grayslake, T5 Data Centers, LLC, and Alter Asset Management Company as defendants.

* Lake County News-Sun | Lake County Board District 10 candidates talk affordability, Grayslake data center: Sullivan said she’s heard two issues from people: the cost of living and concerns over development, especially the Grayslake data center. There are limited options for addressing the cost of living from the County Board, Sullivan admitted, but she emphasized focusing on what she could influence: fiscal restraint, taxpayer dollar responsibility, public-private partnerships, and investing in infrastructure to avoid long-term issues. Meanwhile, the data center development has people “very concerned,” Sullivan said.

* Pioneer Press | Skokie calls for review of Flock cameras following national surge of misuse: “We’ve heard a lot from residents who are extremely concerned about a lot of different things that weren’t so much addressed in this presentation,” Trustee Lissa Levy voiced to Barnes and Oakley at the Sept. 8 meeting. “What are the measures in place to prevent hacking into [this] data, especially given what we’re all hearing about AI systems being able to hack into other companies, other entities unknown, unseen?” Levy questioned. “Law enforcement data has specific security requirements,” Barnes responded. “The Illinois State police and the secretary of state, that’s who maintains our law enforcement data system…they have to approve of anybody who’s gonna have access.”

* Daily Northwestern | Residents decry data center proposal, call for moratorium at City Council: The Daily obtained an overview of the proposal through a Freedom of Information Act request Monday morning. In the proposal, Lark Management claimed the data center would be housed entirely within the property’s existing 19,660-square-foot structure and be a “permitted continuation of industrial use at this site.” The data center proposal faces stiff opposition from residents, councilmembers and Mayor Daniel Biss, who has called for a data center moratorium. City staff determined the project is not permissible under current zoning rules in a Monday news release.

* Forbes | ‘I Like Them’: Trump Backs Controversial Flock Cameras Despite Protests: While speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One while flying back from Ireland, Trump was asked what he thought of Flock cameras. Trump said he “sort of” likes them because he believes they help law enforcement. However, the president acknowledged pushback against the cameras from “some people,” who think “it’s an infringement.” When a reporter interjected, saying they “help catch a lot of criminals,” Trump once again said, “I like them.”

* Government Technology | Why State CIOs Find Themselves in the AI Data Center Debate:The annual survey from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), released at its conference this week, found that roughly half of state CIOs were now involved in some way in their states’ handling of such data center development, or expected to become involved. That might entail sitting on a task force, advising elected officials or even working with developers to show them how they can invest in a community to be a net positive after their project is completed. In a panel discussion, three CIOs discussed the roles they’ve taken on. Timothy Galluzi, CIO for Nevada, said he does see the importance of AI data centers given the global “arms race” in technology, especially between large countries such as the U.S. and China.

* IPM News | ‘The people united will never be defeated’: Protesters voice concerns about data center impacts on environment: Dozens of students and community members gathered in front of Foellinger Auditorium on the Main Quad at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to show their opposition to the construction of AI data centers in Champaign County. The protest on Friday, Sept. 25 was organized by the Students for Environmental Concerns (SECS), a registered student organization at the U of I. Gabi DelSanto, SECS president and a U of I senior, said the group got involved with data center matters after meeting the co-founders of Resist AI Data Centers in Champaign County — Ruth Yontz and Antonia Herbstreit.

*ref=”https://www.404media.co/surveillance-company-tells-cops-it-wants-to-add-facial-recognition-to-flock-cameras/”> 404 Media | Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras: As Flock continues to be the center of a nationwide conversation about automatic license plate reading cameras, the company has said that it doesn’t, and won’t, do facial recognition: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to “close that gap.” A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company’s product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon data in “one searchable platform.”

* Reuters | Anthropic’s $518 billion AI buildout hinges largely on deals that cannot be canceled, filing shows: The AI lab said in the prospectus that about 80% of that sum is non-cancelable or requires payment regardless of usage. Anthropic is telling investors the commitments are necessary because access to computing power is becoming the key constraint on AI development, as future demand for advanced AI systems is likely to exceed available supply and will be “limited principally by the availability of compute.”

* Reuters | Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs: The prospectus details how the company has grown sharply in the last year — while also posting wider losses. Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis, excluding writedowns of various liabilities mostly tied to previous fundraising, according to the documents, reported here for the first time.