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On July 14, New York Governor Kathy Hochul 

 establishing the first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers in the United States. The pause on permits could last up to one year, applies to facilities drawing 50 or more megawatts of power, and is meant to provide a study period during which Albany will “build a nation-leading regulatory framework that protects ratepayers, the environment, the energy grid and communities across the state,” according to the governor’s 

New York’s moratorium follows a growing number of similar resolutions from local governments across the country. Many officials in those communities have also expressed their intent to use these pauses to 

 on data center development. Moratoriums have bought time for such reflection. What questions are most critical?

Fortunately, guidelines concerning data center development are already available for local officials and can serve as a solid foundation for a study period like New York's. For example, in May 2026, Cuyahoga County, Ohio—which contains Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs—published a set of “

” across several issue areas. It also provides tips for recognizing a data center developer’s permit application, including vague project descriptions like “light industrial” or “technology park,” the use of LLCs, large land parcels, high electric and water use, and early contact with economic development organizations—as well as 

 local officials should ask prospective developers before proceeding.

This guide is far from the only resource available to local decision-makers. Below, we draw from 17 publicly available resources from governments, researchers, and advocacy organizations to provide a list of potential policies and questions local officials can consider during their own data center study periods—most of which are bespoke to data centers, though some draw on trends from negotiations with other industries.

In addition to these resources, we also reviewed proposed state legislation that directs the development of model zoning codes; authorizes or requires the local regulation of data centers; or sets out moratorium procedures. Local government documentation of moratorium plans provided a third set of recommendations. The following are policy choices that government bodies may choose to take.

signing of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs

, a common practice in economic development that can erode public trust in development and oversight processes and can 

 disclosure of all corporate entities involved

 for ongoing noise assessments, environmental impact monitoring, the value of all tax abatements sought or received, jobs created, median wages (important because inclusion of managers can raise mean wage rates in misleading ways), and 

 disclosing baseline water and energy use and 

. Such disclosures should be considered public records, not trade secrets.

through hearings, online hubs, and regular communication about the process, actors involved, and any agreements under consideration. Be prepared to provide answers about environmental impact, the developer and end-users, their history of community engagement and benefit, power generation and infrastructure costs, noise levels, and other issues.

Exclude data centers from by-right zoning

, which does not require approval from elected officials or the public.

” standards for landscaping, screening, and other factors. Restrict variances to prevent developers from sidestepping the rules.

 from property lines, especially residential property lines. The use of hedges and other buffers or screens should be required. Be mindful that confinement to industrial zones alone may not fully mitigate environmental impacts on nearby residential neighborhoods.

, and create regular monitoring and resident complaint processes for noise violations.

Avoid placing data centers on sites with more valuable development options

, such as near transit hubs or in historic buildings.

 as part of the data center permitting process

 to enable greater confidence about expected impacts and ensure proper mitigations.

Independent and/or expert third-party authors may be stipulated.

 including roads during the construction phase as well as the electrical grid, drainage systems, and gas lines.

 for site restoration, require advance planning, and collect financial assurance to cover all related costs.

Include plans for stranded infrastructure and site restoration

 with utility providers early in the process,

” letter affirming that utilities have sufficient capacity.

If additional generation or transmission capacity is required, 

 requiring data center developers or end-users to pay for it.

 (a class of energy ratepayer which may need to be created) and require long-term contracts with penalties for early termination, to protect against stranded assets or data center closures.

 during heat waves or local emergencies. Legislators across the PJM region have drafted a 

 requiring data center operators in that territory be subject to potential service interruptions.

for large-quantity water users, e.g. 10,000 ccf or 7.48 million gallons per month. Create additional requirements for these users, such as recycled water offsets.

 from stormwater, wastewater, or public water systems rather than well supply. 

As stated above, require facilities to report municipal water use and treat that information as public record. Likewise, require them to disclose the 

Create requirements for renewable energy procurement

 as part of community benefits agreements, or CBAs. Procured renewable energy should be 

 to existing renewable capacity available on the grid. Do not provide exceptions for behind-the-meter generation.

, which are often diesel powered, noisy, and pollution-generating.

corporate investment in the local power grid, exit fees in case a project fails, workforce training programs, support for public health and broadband access, and other benefits in any direct payment scheme included in a CBA.

Tax revenue is often one of the main benefits local policymakers hope to receive from data center projects, and both economists and corporate officials 

 many governments provide more tax incentives than necessary to attract data center developers. Limit the use of PILOT payments, which 

and the models behind them; most CBA benefits are only seen after a facility is fully operational, if at all.

 a project is expected to create, tying tax abatements or other benefits to those targets.

Include directly-impacted community members

 on data centers for tax revenue, which can reduce future flexibility for the local economy.

 in order to save time across multiple negotiations, strengthen rules and requirements, improve bargaining power, and legitimize them through the legislative process.

, diluting the economic value of even temporary jobs.

establish a floor on employer benefit contributions and require prevailing wages

Most data center jobs are temporary construction roles. These should not count toward jobs created permanently in the host community.

 of staffers, experts and stakeholders to coordinate and oversee the process.

Obtain studies and reports by qualified professionals

 about data center impacts from prospective developers.

with government and external experts regarding impacts, and with attorneys regarding proposed ordinances.

, present it to the public, and gather feedback before taking important votes.

Creating a monitoring and enforcement regime

Ensure oversight does not end at approval

 continued compliance with CBAs, other agreements, and local regulations should be monitored on a continuing basis—including through third-party audits. Resource consumption should be measured regularly and environmental impact—including wastewater discharge and emission of air pollutants—should be 

 provided to data center projects and progress against any conditional requirements.

Because nominal fines are ineffective against multibillion dollar corporations, 

, up to permit and certificate revocation, for hyperscale facilities

 and ensure that the authority to levy those penalties is 

 in boards with meaningful oversight capacity and capability to act.

 water shutoffs or revocations of certificates of occupancy, 

which may be stronger enforcement mechanisms than fines.

 to state or local requirements, e.g. emissions standards.

A group of civil society groups, including some whose work is represented in the material above, will host a webinar titled 

You Passed a Data Center Moratorium; Now What?! 

Jake Laperruque is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

) systems in general, and the high-profile vendor Flock in particular, are facing a moment of public reckoning in the United States. This surveillance technology is provoking 

 their Flock contracts, and Congress is considering 

. There is even a growing trend of vigilantes 

An effort to push back against this pushback is underway. Over the past two weeks there’s been a flurry of pieces from voices on the right— including in the 

 senior fellow writing in The Atlantic, and alt-right figure 

 that the only way to "solve" crime would be "more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people.") — that shrug off privacy concerns and praise Flock as a vital crimefighting tool. These claims may offer a messaging boost for Flock, but they’re paper thin as a substantive defense: There is simply no real evidence ALPRs are causing major drops in crime. In fact, as Jason Pye of the Due Process Institute 

, there’s good countervailing evidence that ALPRs are merely hitching a free ride on the general post-pandemic crime drop that’s occurring across places both with and without the surveillance tool.

Adding to this PR push, on August 13, Flock announced a new 

 aimed at responding to criticism, particularly a 

 finding that dozens of officers have abused its tech to stalk romantic partners and other personal acquaintances. But while this update includes some meaningful changes — in particular it cuts standard data retention to one week — it mostly landed with a thud, with privacy experts flagging 

 to the new policy and highlighting that it still relies on 

And ultimately, only addressing the risks of ALPRs currently in the spotlight — stalking, abuse, and false positives leading to 

 — will leave a larger problem uncured: The current privacy risks from ALPRs are just the tip of the iceberg, and will dramatically expand in coming years. Unless they are seriously reined in, ALPR systems such as Flock will become a far more pervasive mass surveillance tool than they are today.

A warning sign of where ALPRs are headed can be seen in the AI driving analytics system being 

 by the federal Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP). Under this system, all driving data from ALPRs is scanned and analyzed by AI software, then AI provides automated designations of driving patterns it deems “suspicious” and flags cars to be pulled over. According to the 

 investigative report that unmasked this system, “The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested.” Notably, Flock’s new one-week retention policy would have no impact on this emerging use of ALPRs. And contrary to the ‘

’ posture of Flock’s defenders, innocent behavior behind the wheel such as taking a back road, driving at odd hours, or going somewhere unusual could become an AI-generated basis for pulling you over.

The vendors pushing automated license plate readers also want their video surveillance networks to effortlessly track and catalog more than just license plates. There is a growing arsenal of 

 tools that can allow the government to sift through footage to pull up types of vehicles, objects, movement paths, and people. As 404 Media recently 

, Flock is leaning into this creeping expansion of ALPRs into an all-purpose video scanner, with its “FreeForm” search function regularly used to scan the network’s stockpile of video footage for people. It’s not a stretch to envision this tool being used to track individuals based on demographic traits or political expression; there are already documented cases of officers running Flock FreeForm searches targeting people with 

Automated video analytics will also enable 

. In the US, police typically use facial recognition by scanning a designated face from a crime scene photo. But efforts are already underway to create dragnet systems (sometimes referred to as “real-time facial recognition”) where instead of trying to ID a specific person, the AI scans 

 that appears on a video feed and checks them against watchlists. This dragnet facial recognition has long been a key pillar of China’s 

 surveillance apparatus, is being deployed 

 across the United Kingdom, and last year made its first known US appearance in New Orleans. Fortunately, the New Orleans program was 

 in response to major public backlash. But we should expect more efforts to push this pervasive surveillance technology. And the networks of ALPR cameras increasingly blanketing America’s cities — combined with growing use of AI video analytics tools — offer a clear infrastructure that dragnet facial recognition could be grafted onto.

As video analytics technology continues to grow more powerful, and vendors continue to 

 their camera networks to record more and more, we will likely see ALPRs mutate into an all-seeing eye that can be searched for any type of vehicle, object, or 

 just as easily as we now search for words in a text file. That is not a future a free and democratic society should allow. Stopping it will require far stronger measures than the type of agency protocols and administrative self-policing Flock and its proponents are offering. We need to curtail the proliferation of video surveillance networks across the country, and place strict limits — centered on independent, judicial review — on ALPR and other automated video analytics technologies.

Varsha Bansal is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

Opening statements will be heard this week in 

 in Oakland, California, where Meta will again face a judge and jury over alleged harms to children. Four state attorneys general — from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — are the first of 29 to try claims that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, violated their consumer protection laws. This trial would also cover allegations by all 29 states that Meta violated a federal law called Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA by illegally collecting children’s data.

 last week as part of the jury. They will play an advisory role, while the US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers 

 the final ruling. The trial may last six to eight weeks with a verdict in October and during that time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to testify.

The trial is part of the social media adolescent-addiction multidistrict litigation (MDL), which has 

 from around the country since 2022. Among the alleged concerns are that Meta designed its apps to keep minors hooked to them and did that despite knowing from its own researchers that its products cause serious mental health issues for kids.

During the trial, states will show evidence they say demonstrates how the apps were designed to be addictive and Meta’s awareness of it, rather than focusing on the content on these platforms. That’s a deliberate strategy, since social media companies can invoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields them from liability for most third-party content posted on their platforms. The states hope to frame the case around product design and alleged deception.

“A few years ago, these tech companies were mostly seen as untouchable, largely due to the interpretation of Section 230 as a blank check for the tech industry’s recklessness and greed,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at The George Washington University’s law school “But as the destructive consequences of this interpretation have become harder and harder to ignore, courts have finally started to scale back their deference to the industry and to treat their broad claims of immunity with increasing skepticism.”

Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Elsewhere the company has 

 allegations made by the state AGs. The company 

 it could face up to $1.4 trillion in damages, close to its total market value.

This trial is one piece of a much larger and complicated structure. A multidistrict litigation, as the name suggests, allows similar cases that are filed across different federal districts to be consolidated for a single federal judge. For the social media adolescent-addiction cases against tech companies, as of now 

 have been consolidated under the MDL. These are different from the thousands of cases consolidated separately in California state court under a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding, or JCCP. In addition, individual states have also filed cases in their own courts which includes the recent New Mexico state AG case where Meta was 

 a combined amount of $942 million, and the ongoing trial against Meta in 

The MDL includes four different tracks: the first are individual lawsuits filed by minors and parents alleging tech platforms to cause anxiety, depression, self-harm among its young users. The second track is that of the cases filed by school districts who have sued for public nuisance alleging that these platforms created a mental health crisis inside their schools. The third group is that of 29 state attorneys general and the fourth (and smallest) track is a set of cases filed by Native American Tribes.

From these thousands of cases, the judge has selected 11 as “bellwether” trials: five personal injury lawsuits and six school district cases.

“The idea is that there are so many cases that have been filed, rather than trying to hear them all, the court will pick some sample of those cases, try those, and hope that gives the parties enough information to figure out a resolution,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, adding that the first bellwether trial from the MDL did not go as expected.

It was a case brought on by Breathitt County School District in Kentucky against the four tech platforms — TikTok, Meta, Snap and YouTube and was scheduled for a trial in June. But the case was settled in May even before it could go to trial, with the four defendants 

 a total of $27 million to the school district. This included $9 million from Meta.

This means the upcoming trial would be the first from the MDL to reach a jury — and also the first one to be brought by the state AGs — making it “the first real test of the federal litigation’s merits.” said Franks.

Lawyer Haley Hinkle, who has been tracking all the social media lawsuits, believes this upcoming trial is going to be an important one for several reasons. The four states are 

 Judge Rogers to tell Meta to make some changes to the platform: including implementing age restrictions, getting rid of the infinite scroll feature, and deleting algorithms built on children’s data.

“When you've got four states from across the country, including the state that is home to Meta, trying their claims together on behalf of the harms to all the families, that's going to be very significant,” said Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, an organization that works to protect kids from Big Tech. “They are going to be pursuing not only damages but changes to the platform's conduct — these AGs are highly motivated to see actual change, and that’s why they’ve been so aggressive and so coordinated across all the states in getting these types of claims to trial.”

Legal experts explain that the state AGs are expected to make two main arguments against Meta. The first is regarding the violations of the four state’s consumer protection laws where the states are going to point at Meta for profiting enormously from exploiting the attention and time of children.

This is expected to be their core argument: “You have come into our state and gone after our consumers, our kids, and you've lied to them about your product: you've told them it's safe, but it's not. It's addictive, and when we go and look at all your records, your internal conversations reveal that you know it actually is addictive, and that it can create a lot of mental health problems. So you're lying to them,” explained Benjamin Zipursky, a law professor at Fordham University School of Law.

As for the COPPA side of things, legal experts say that the states are going to argue that Meta violated this 1998 law which tells companies to get parental consent before they collect data of users who are under 13.

“There are a ton of kids under the age of 13 on these platforms — that has been something the platforms know and have ignored, [and] failed to take appropriate measures to remove those kids from their platform,” said Previn Warren, co-lead counsel for some of the plaintiffs in the MDL. “And they've done that because having young kids on the platform is financially beneficial to the company: every fresh crop of kids with a smartphone is a new generation of kids for Instagram to add.”

More MDL trials are anticipated to get underway early next year. The next school district bellwether trials, filed by Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District and South Carolina’s Charleston County School District, are scheduled for 

As of now, it’s unclear when the individual bellwether cases from the MDL will be tried. But with the deluge of lawsuits and a wave of new legislation, one thing is clear, say some legal experts: change is imminent.

“In my mind, [it is] fairly clear that social media, as currently constructed, will not survive the legal onslaught. Something will change — I don't know how many different things [or] how structural those changes will be,” said Goldman. “The only way that social media could potentially remain as it is currently today is essentially if the social media services win everything: they win all the court battles and they win and defeat all the legislation. And I just don't see how that’s possible.”

In June, during Hanoi’s record breaking heatwave, photos alluding to rice grains being dried under the sun and exploding into popcorn went viral. Shortly afterwards, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security 

 on its Facebook page that the person behind the photos had been fined ₫7.5 million dong ($285) for spreading false information.

“Refrain from posting or disseminating false or misleading information that affects security, public order, and the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” the announcement said. “Any violations will be strictly dealt with according to the law.”

As of July 1, what counts as violation goes beyond a meme spreading “fake news,” as Vietnam’s new 

 and its related decrees have come into effect. Disinformation, anti-state content, inciting violence, defamation, harassment, and immoral content have already been illegal since the original 

 of the law. The updated version expands the scope to include calling for boycotts that harm businesses, causing division among the people, and hindering the policy of international solidarity, among others. The penalties have been raised too, going as high as ₫

“I think this kind of law, it kind of makes people police themselves,” an administrator of a Vietnamese pro-Palestine Facebook page who has been actively supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement told Tech Policy Press. With this law in place, “the BDS movement will never happen in Vietnam.”

“Vietnam’s cybersecurity framework, while also addressing legitimate concerns such as cybercrime, online fraud, and national security risks, has raised concerns among human rights groups because some provisions are broader and can allow restrictions on legitimate expression, political speech, and access to information,” said Lana Z., lead of the human rights group ARTICLE 19’s Engaging Tech for Internet Freedom team, who requested to not use her full name for safety reasons.

The new law does come at a time of increasingly sophisticated and damaging cyber attacks, and proliferation of personal data theft. “The development of artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and new technologies like deepfakes is being exploited by cybercriminals to carry out scams and social engineering,” stated a 

 introducing the Cybersecurity Law’s implementing draft decree prepared by the Ministry of Public Security, which is the government body in charge of the law.

“Meanwhile, management of cross border service providers has faced difficulties due to lack of a mechanism mandating storage of data in Vietnam to serve investigation purposes,” the report added.

The law attempts to solve that by giving the Ministry of Public Security greater oversight. It streamlines previously overlapping provisions, assigning more responsibilities to specific government authorities more clearly to safeguard national security, critical information systems, digital infrastructure, and personal data.

On Facebook, Vietnamese authorities have been posting about specific users they have fined and what kinds of online speech they are being fined for. Many of these posts include the person’s initials, the area they live in, and a photo with their face obscured. Some of the posts include language 

 users to think carefully about who they follow and what they post on social media.

“From a governance perspective, fining ordinary users may be a more scalable and less resource-intensive enforcement tool than criminal prosecution or detention, while still creating a significant chilling effect,” Lana Z. told Tech Policy Press. “Publicizing these penalties also sends a broader message that online conduct is under surveillance and that even seemingly minor online activity can result in legal consequences.”

In some recent cases, authorities have publicized fining people for things like 

 with a subversive or reactionary website, 

 offensive comments under a post promoting a product. But other examples of offenses include a user sharing a 

 about a type of biofuel that the government has recently mandated people use.

For Lana Z., these cases speak to the breadth of Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law. “If content such as satire, memes, folklore, criticism of public officials, or engagement with politically sensitive content can trigger administrative sanctions, it suggests that the governing laws and regulations are being interpreted very broadly.”

“So much of what we post on the internet is silly, it's these attempts to make sense of the world,” said Kian Vesteinsson, deputy director for research at the nonprofit Freedom House, where he focuses on tech policy and digital rights. “When you have a censorship regime that considers any challenge to the government's view of the world to be a crime, what you have is an internet that's scrubbed of all of the things that make it pleasurable and fun and good for people.”

An important change that’s come into effect last month is a tightened window for social media platforms to respond to takedown requests from Vietnamese authorities. The law now gives platforms 24 hours to remove infringing content, but in “urgent cases,” that’s shortened further to six hours.

“This is an incredibly brief window for trust and safety staff at a platform to understand whether a notified post is something that's genuinely violative of local law, and it incentivizes platforms to over-remove content in order to not be found in breach of Vietnamese law,” Vesteinsson told Tech Policy Press. “Platforms can face incredibly excessive fines or the wholesale block of their services in Vietnam if they're found to be in breach of these really repressive content removal mandates.”

The press arm of the Ministry of Public Security 

 in a recent article that “The Cybersecurity Law is an important legal tool that contributes to protecting national security, maintaining social order and safety, and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of citizens in cyberspace.”

But that’s only one side of the coin. “Governments have an interest and a responsibility in building a more secure online environment, and certainly cybersecurity should be a priority for policymakers, but Vietnam's cybersecurity law is only nominally about cybersecurity,” said Vesteisson. Since the original law was passed in 2018, “this law has been focused on curtailing dissent on the Vietnamese internet.”

, over provisions that require platforms to share user data, censor posts without judicial oversight, and establish local offices in the country.

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