How the FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages

Summary

The 404 Media Podcast — April 16, 2026

Episode: How the FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages

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Overview

This episode is split into two major themes:

1. Investigative reporting on the FBI’s ability to extract deleted Signal app messages from iPhones via notification data (led by Joseph and Emanuel).
2. A deep dive into local resistance against the rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S., including recent developments and noteworthy controversies (led by Matthew).

Throughout, the hosts illuminate how technology, policy, and community action intersect—with frank, accessible discussion and expert insight.

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Segment 1: FBI Extraction of Deleted Signal Messages (00:00–22:13)

Main Story: Technological Exploit in a High-Profile Case

• Headline Story: The FBI successfully forensically extracted Signal messages—intended and believed to be deleted—from an iPhone’s notification database, specifically during a case involving the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.
• Case Background:
  • This is the first case leveraging President Trump’s designation of "Antifa" as a domestic terrorist organization for prosecution ([01:39]).
  • The case itself involved fireworks, vandalism, and an officer being shot during a protest at the detention center.

Key Investigative Insights

• Discovery:

  • Supporters’ website mentioned Signal data being recovered by the FBI; Joseph (Joe) confirmed this via interviews with a supporter present during FBI testimony and an attorney.
  • Quote: “We learned that specifically on iPhones, if one's settings in the Signal app allow for message notifications and previews to show up on the lock screen, then the iPhone will internally store those notifications or messages previews in the internal memory of the device.” ([03:16], supporter)
  • This revelation was corroborated by the attorney and Joseph, noting that even with the Signal app uninstalled, message data remains in notification storage ([03:16]–[05:17]).

• Technical Angle:

  • Signal is still best-in-class for encryption, with robust protocol and minimal server-side data retention ([06:03]).
  • But forensic extraction is the black box: “There is this black box when it comes to security and this big gap in knowledge, which is forensic extraction, which is when the authorities or a third party get hold of a phone … What data could people get from a device or from the Signal app or any sort of secure communications app if they have physical access?” ([06:03]–[09:03], Joseph)

Details on the iPhone Notification Database

• Mechanism:
  • Every notification received (including message previews) is saved in an internal iPhone notification database.
  • Deleting the app does not remove this database; thus, the FBI was able to extract message content from it ([09:10]).
  • “It's not like the FBI here got the phone and extracted messages from Signal. They extracted them from the notification database.” ([09:10], Joseph)

User Warnings & Signal’s Countermeasures

• Notification Settings:
  • Signal provides three notification content settings (“name and preview,” “name only,” or none). Using “none” or “name only” likely mitigates stored content ([11:07]).
    • “I'm hesitant to say it's 100% fix, but from all the information available, it seems like that that would stop this.” ([11:07], Joseph)
  • It’s unclear if changing settings retroactively clears old notifications; Apple did not comment ([13:04]–[13:23]).
• Broader Guidance:
  • Disabling notifications entirely might work but is impractical for most users ([14:06]).

Forensic Extraction Caveats

• Complexity:
  • Many variables affect forensic extraction: OS version, app version, notification settings, whether the phone is unlocked for authorities, etc.
  • Quote: “You cannot expect an ordinary user … to know and understand and be able to counter all this. One, because it's so complicated and two, because of this, like, fog of war.” ([15:02], Joseph)
  • Stronger device-wide security (like iPhone lockdown mode) is more effective than app-level precautions ([16:27]).

Security Recommendations

• Signal Remains “Best in Class”:

  • “We recommend Signal. We continue to recommend Signal after this story. It's a very good organization, it's a very good protocol, and it's still best in class.” ([17:37], Emanuel)
  • The notification vulnerability is not exclusive to Signal; all messaging apps that display preview notifications are potentially affected ([19:00]).

• Fundamental Takeaway:

  • This loophole is about the interface between secure apps and operating system notification management—not the failure of Signal’s encryption.

Memorable Quotes

• Joseph:
  • “The only information that Signal could turn over was, I think, the account creation time maybe, but certainly the last sort of time it was active, there was no IP address, there was no phone number, there was no sort of identifying information. And that's because Signal does not retain that in the first place.” ([06:03])
  • “If Signal is changing how the notifications are even rendered in the first place, say, if it just says a name and no message, well, presumably that's going to be the version that's then saved…” ([11:07])
• Emanuel:
  • “The fact that you're using Signal is good. It doesn't mean that it's like I'm using Signal, so no one is ever going to get my messages. 100%, I am certain of that.” ([17:37])

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Segment 2: Data Center Pushback and Grassroots Tech Resistance (25:56–42:47)

Maine’s Data Center Moratorium (25:56–32:29)

• Legislation:
  • Maine is close to passing a moratorium on new data centers over 20 megawatts until November 2027, to allow more thoughtful planning ([26:20], Matthew).
  • A Data Center Coordination Council will oversee the process, considering water, noise, and electricity issues ([26:20]).
• Secrecy & Local Impact:
  • Developers often approach small towns in secret, have officials sign NDAs, and keep the public in the dark until construction is imminent ([27:23]).
  • Recent pushback in Maine was triggered by a $300 million project proposed in an old mill that the city council ultimately blocked after local journalism revealed the details ([28:01]–[29:13]).
• Similar Cases Nationwide:
  • Missouri: Entire city council voted out and a mayor recall attempt over a $6 billion data center proposal ([29:46]).

Speculation and Industry Trends

• Speculative Building:
  • Many developers build data centers “on spec,” hoping to secure clients later, leading to friction with local communities ([30:51], Matthew).
  • Tech giants like Meta and Google are usually transparent about their plans, but much speculative building is done by third-party construction firms ([31:20]).
  • Quote: “I think when all of this kind of shakes out in a couple years, I think we're going to find out that there was kind of this real estate rush where people were trying to build out a lot of compute because they thought that AI was going to be the big thing and maybe demand was oversold.” ([32:29], Matthew)

Protests & Legal Challenges (32:29–38:57)

• Oklahoma Town Hall Arrest:
  • Farmer Darren Blanchard was arrested for going 30 seconds over his speaking time at a data center town hall meeting ([33:39]).
  • He is fighting the trespass charge, which his attorney claims raises ethical and constitutional issues due to the prosecutor being an eyewitness ([37:37]).
  • The city has demanded $16,500 to produce public records related to the case, leading to further legal challenge ([37:37]).

Local and Nationwide Movements

• Growing Grassroots Resistance:
  • Similar ballot measures and resistance movements in California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri ([39:24]).
  • Common issues: higher electricity bills, water scarcity, relentless noise; most new data centers target towns under 50,000 ([39:24]).
  • Increasingly organized local action, with communities sharing successful resistance and negotiation tactics in online groups ([41:37]).

Techlash Context

• Broader anti-AI, anti-infrastructure Sentiment:
  • Reference to recent direct actions (e.g., Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house), paralleling the resistance against surveillance infrastructure ([41:37]).
  • The techlash is hyperlocal and not reflected in federal policy, analogous to city-by-city opposition to automated license plate reader systems ([41:37]–[42:47]).

Key Quotes

• Matthew:
  • “There's a repeated pattern of these data centers going into communities of under 50,000 people … and they're finding that it's not working out the way they thought.” ([39:24])
  • “I'm in some groups where I'm just kind of watching people organize and there's a lot of grassroots organization and a lot of people talking about what to do at a community level and like sharing information across different communities about what worked for us, what didn't work for us, how to talk to these different companies.” ([41:37])
• Joseph:
  • “People are kind of waking up to the way that tech is directly affecting them and they're pushing back.” ([42:47])

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Timestamps: Major Segments & Noteworthy Moments

• 00:00 — FBI extracted deleted Signal messages via iPhone notification database (main theme introduction)
• 03:16 — Supporters and attorney explain how messages persist in iPhone memory
• 06:03 — Signal’s reputation and security model, forensic extraction limitations
• 09:10 — How FBI exploited notification storage, even after Signal app deletion
• 11:07 — How notification settings might prevent message content leakage
• 14:06 — Disabling notifications as an extreme countermeasure
• 15:02 — Layered complexities and the “fog of war” around forensic extraction
• 17:37 — Why Signal remains best-in-class, acknowledgment of limitations
• 19:00 — Vulnerability is chat app agnostic; links to broader issues
• 25:56 — Introduction to the Maine data center moratorium story
• 26:20 — Main details of the moratorium bill and oversight council
• 28:01 — Maine city council blocks secretive data center plan after journalistic exposé
• 29:46 — Missouri: City council ousted over data center proposal
• 32:29 — Speculative “compute real estate rush” and its local fallout
• 33:39 — Oklahoma farmer’s arrest at town hall, legal fight
• 37:37 — Legal and procedural escalation, attorney’s perspective
• 39:24 — Data center resistance, ballot measures across U.S.
• 41:37 — Intensifying grassroots organizing, parallels to anti-surveillance tech action

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Overall Tone & Style

• Direct, evidence-focused, and unvarnished: The hosts lay out technical and legal details with clarity, discuss limitations and unknowns candidly, and highlight the messy reality of both digital and civic policy.
• Informative yet approachable: Even when unpacking nuanced security concepts or legislative processes, the tone is accessible and lightly conversational.
• Emphasis on practical implications and real-world stakes: The reporting is grounded in how these events and vulnerabilities tangibly affect people—whether privacy-conscious users or small communities resisting tech’s physical expansion.

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For listeners—this episode is essential for:

• Anyone who uses secure messaging and wants to understand the real technical risks
• Observers of the AI and cloud infrastructure boom, and its pushback at the local level
• Privacy and security professionals tracking the evolving landscape of digital evidence
• Policy-watchers interested in the friction between big tech, small communities, and local democracy

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End of main summary. For bonus segments, subscribe to 404 Media!

Transcript

[A]

The FBI was able to forensically extract signal messages that were supposed to be deleted, and they've been stored in the iPhone notification database. Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founding company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404Media code as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content@404 media co. I'm your host, Joseph. And it's a little bit different today. We have another of the 404 Media co founders, that being Emmanuel Mayberg.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

And then we also have our regular contributor, Matthew Goal.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

All right, if I sound very tired, which I am, is because we were up all night. Okay, not all night, relatively late into the night, playing the video game marathon, which we're going to talk about in the subscribers only section because Emmanuel wrote about it. I'll leave that there for the time being. But, Emmanuel, do you want to take the lead on this first story? Yeah.

[B]

The first story today is from Joe. The headline is FBI extracts suspects deleted Signal messages saved in iPhone notification database. Joe, let's start with what is the case itself. What is the Prairieland Detention Center?

[A]

Yeah, so this is a really significant case because it is the first one after the Trump administration designated activities Antifa. I'm sorry, I'm European. I'm going to say antifa and not antifa. I might jump between the two of them. I know the Americans say it differently, but the first time President Trump designated that umbrella term a domestic terrorist organization. So this is the first case sort of using that designation to push charges on people. The specific incident itself was at this Prairieland detention ICE facility in Texas back in July, and fireworks were let off, there was vandalizing, and then one person also shot a rifle which hit a police officer in the neck. There were all of these different sorts of charges, but of course, the big ones are about, you know, material support for terrorism, that sort of thing, which is only possible because now antifa has been labeled as this domestic terrorist group, even though, of course, I'm sure listeners know that it's not really a group, it's an ideology, perhaps even a loose collection of ideologies. But that's this specific case, and that would already be sort of newsworthy and important on its own. But obviously I looked at it more from a technological angle.

[B]

So you spoke to two people who were Present for the FBI testimony during the trial. What did they say?

[A]

Yeah, so first of all, there is a website from sort of supporters of the defendants of this case. I don't have the URL in front of me, but it is linked in the story. And I go to that and I see a section mentioning signal and it says, I'm paraphrasing. The FBI testified about recovering deleted signal messages from a phone because of notification settings. I'm like, well, that's very, very interesting. I have never, ever heard of that, although people have suspected it for a while. But this was, as I said, just a summary from supporters of the defendants. I couldn't, like, write an article just based on that. So it took me a long time. And the supporters did help out with putting me in touch with various people. But I spoke to an attorney representing one of them and then a supporter who was in the room. And I'll just read what the supporter said. They said, quote, we learned that specifically on iPhones, if one's settings in the signal app allow for message notifications and previews to show up on the lock screen, then the iPhone will internally store those notifications or messages previews in the internal memory of the device. End quote. And then the lawyer I spoke to, she corroborated that she was taking notes at the time, and they essentially said the same thing. So now I have the summary from the supporters. I have a supporter who was in there and an attorney all saying the same thing, which is that the FBI was able to forensically extract signal messages that were supposed to be deleted. The app was supposed to be or it was removed, and they've been stored in the iPhone notification database. Now, of course, we'll talk about it in a minute, but there's a lot of nuance around that. There's a lot of caveats, but to me, that is very, very interesting. Right. Like, I imagine the manual that you hadn't heard of that being a possibility either.

[B]

I haven't. And I also thought it was pretty interesting and concerning. I happened to talk to someone who relies on signal at work this weekend to do some sensitive business, and they were also surprised and found your story independently because they rely on signal very heavily to do all those secure communications. I guess I also want to say I feel confident in saying this, but. Joe, please verbally confirm we consider signal to be best in class for encrypted secure messaging. Correct. And we still feel that way, despite the story.

[A]

Yeah. And I'll just say, why. So signal is broadly considered the best option out of the messaging platforms out there, the first is the protocol itself, which is very, very robust, which actually encrypts the messages. And that's so good. That's been white, labeled, adopted by Facebook messaging and WhatsApp and it's in all sorts of other apps as well. I actually know some criminal focused apps have even taken the Signal protocols and they've decided to use that as well. That was used in Encrochat. So there's that part, there's, there's also the disappearing messages feature where you turn that on and anything sent after here will disappear after four weeks, one week, one day, whatever. There is metadata protection as well. So it should obscure who is talking to who and when and that sort of thing. And I think probably, well, maybe not most importantly, but very importantly is that when authorities or third parties go to Signal, Signal retains very, very, very little user data. And we know this because several years back, I mean, 2016 at this point, so a long time ago, the New York Times published details about a subpoena, I think that Signal received. I can't remember the agency, but a US Federal law enforcement agency. And the only information that Signal could turn over was, I think the account creation time maybe, but certainly the last sort of time it was active, there was no IP address, there was no phone number, there was no sort of identifying information. And that's because Signal does not retain that in the first place. I was actually going to have you ask this question later, but I'll bring it up now because I think it makes sense. Don't. That's all well and good, that all sounds great. There is this black box when it comes to security and this big gap in knowledge, which is forensic extraction, which is when the authorities or a third party get hold of a phone, they plug it into a device like cellebrite or Grey Key that we've covered many, many times. And there's always a question mark over, well, what data could people get from a device or from the Signal app or any sort of secure communications app if they have physical access and they have specialized software. And we don't really know about that because these companies don't talk about that. The authorities don't really talk about it either. We only really know that cellebrite can break into XYZ Phone or Grey Key can't get into this phone because there are leaks and we receive those leaks and then we publish them. That's really the only time we figure that out, or in court cases like this, where authorities do say exactly how they got the data. It's just pretty uncommon for it to be this explicit, you know, did we

[B]

get any specifics around how the FBI managed to get these signal messages in this case?

[A]

Yeah. So I'll just drill down more on the notifications bit, which is that every time it seems, every time a notification comes into your phone, maybe that's Apple News Alert, maybe it's an email and it has the subject line or something like that, or of course, a signal message that is recorded internally in the iPhone's notification database. Now, this is different to the Signal app. Like, the Signal app gets the message after four weeks or a day or whatever. It deletes the message, and you don't see that message when you open the phone. Someone who stole your phone is not going to see that message because it's deleted. And it seems it's also deleted in such a way it is forensically sound. Because, again, it's not like the FBI here got the phone and extracted messages from Signal. They extracted them from the notification database. And that's just something that I think has been really, really overlooked. Well, maybe not by Signal, because we'll talk about. They actually have a fix for it or sort of workaround, but I think maybe broadly in information security, this isn't something that people automatically think of. And the reason I say that is because this person actually deleted the Signal app from their phone, as in, Signal was not even installed when authorities seized and searched the device. And yet the messages were stored in the notification database. So clearly this person thought, well, I'm going to delete the Signal app. Then they can't get my messages while presumably not being aware they're being saved in this other part of the phone.

[B]

Right? I doubt. I mean, I think what's so interesting about this is I don't think any of us were aware or at least actively thinking about that issue. So what is the fix? What can Signal do?

[A]

Well, it's interesting because Signal already has something where if you go into the Signal app, you go to settings, you go to notifications, you go to, I think, notification content. There's then three different options. There's something like name and preview. And that means when you receive a message, you'll get notification saying who sent it to you. So it'll say a manual, and then it will say Hop on Marathon, probably. And then I'll go onto the video game. Or you have one that just says the name. So we'll just say a manual, and it'll just say new message. Or you have one which doesn't even say the name or the message at all. Now, a user can control that and they decide how to do that. And, you know, I'm hesitant to say it's 100% fix, but from all the information available, it seems like that that would stop this. Because if Signal is changing how the notifications are even rendered in the first place, say, if it just says a name and no message, well, presumably that's going to be the version that's then saved in the iPhone notification database locally. So there's that workaround. Now, I don't know whether Signal made that feature, which has been in there for years and years and years, if I remember correctly. I don't know if Signal made that feature for this or whether it was more to stop people looking over your shoulder when you're on the screen or something, or maybe an abusive partner or something like that. I don't know whether they were thinking about forensic extraction and the saving of notifications in the iPhone database because, I mean, I of course contacted Signal for comment, they acknowledged that request for comment, and then they stopped replying to my emails for like a month while I was still going and verifying this. So I don't know why they made that. I don't know how confident they are in that fix. But that is, you know, it seems like a pretty likely solution to this sort of thing.

[B]

But I guess we can't say for certain whether when you change those settings to not show a name or not show the content of the message. We don't know if that data is not actually being sent and stored in the notification database or if it's just not displaying it. Like. Like we can't say that 100%.

[A]

I guess not 100%. And then the other question that comes up to me is more, okay, let's say you read our article and you're like, oh, I'm now going to change my notification settings in Signal. And I do that. That hasn't magically wiped all of the previous notifications which are now stored in your iPhone. You might have. I have no idea. How much is it? Is it one month, six months, a year? Is it an indefinite number of notifications? I really have no idea because again, Apple did not respond to a request for comment either. So it's a black box from all over the forensic companies. And then also Signal, yes, doing a solution, which is great, but not talking to us. And Apple, absolutely not talking to us as well.

[B]

What if I just turn off notifications across the board on the device I'm just like, notifications don't show anything on the lock screen.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that would probably work. And then you're going to miss the barbecue, miss the work message, you know, I don't hate that at that point. Get rid of the phone at that point.

[B]

Yeah. Unrelated. I will say for real though, like, I'm pretty loose about like digital hygiene stuff, like in terms of my brain, not in terms of security. And it's like I'm going to check my phone a million times a day anyway.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just like, I'm fine not getting notifications and just seeing what I missed when I opened my phone, just as a FYI. So what should people know about forensic extraction here? Anything else? Like what to keep in mind when, I don't know, I'm traveling and TSA takes my phone and I know they're gonna poke around.

[A]

Yeah, it's mostly just that. I don't know, like, I do some security trainings sometimes. I did one recently in Costa Rica, which I mentioned behind the Blog to our paying subscribers. And I had a slide on signal in that because I taught these people how to use signal securely and perhaps if you're going to face a legal threat like we have before, all of that sort of thing. But there is always that looming question, and I'm looking at the slide now, which I published in that behind the Blog. And the top bullet point is knowing whether deleted signal messages can be obtained, like, forensically, as the context is difficult to say. And I still stand by that. I would say now we have a data point where the FBI were not able to get deleted messages from the signal app. I mean, maybe that's just because the app was deleted, but they were able to get them in the other way. And I think that unfortunately forensic extraction is just so complicated and there are so many different variables. What version of signal were they running? Or probably more importantly, what version of the operating system were they running? Did the person give consent for their phone to be searched and gave over the passcode or used face id? Did authorities have to break into it? There's all of these very complicated layers interlocking in various different ways. And you cannot expect an ordinary user or even like a fairly tech savvy user to know and understand and be able to counter all this. One, because it's so complicated and two, because of this, like, fog of war around it and where we don't really know what is happening, what isn't. What I would say is that that means you probably need to turn to Something more fundamental where it's like, well, I'm going to stop third parties getting into my device at all. And we recently published an article about how the FBI was unable to get into a Washington Post reporter's phone because she had lockdown mode enabled on her phone. So who knows, Maybe if the FBI had got in, they could have seen incoming signal messages stored in the iPhone notification database, but they couldn't even get into the phone in the first place because there was this other, more fundamental setting called lockdown mode that stopped access in the first place, if you see what I mean.

[B]

Couple of last things. One is this person I was talking to about your story this weekend, they asked me, well, should I switch to a different app? And I said, no, absolutely not. Continue to use Signal. We recommend Signal. We continue to recommend Signal after this story. It's a very good organization, it's a very good protocol, and it's still best in class. It's what we use and it's what we recommend you use. At the same time, I don't think people always have this in mind. The fact that you're using Signal is good. It doesn't mean that it's like I'm using Signal, so no one is ever going to get my messages. 100%, I am certain of that. We don't know, as you say, there's all these other black boxes in the mix. Things can happen and you need to keep that in mind. That being said, this isn't a problem that just impacts Signal, Right. This is a problem for other apps as well. So we continue to recommend people use Signal. And we also, I think, can see that this is a problem that is not impacting just Signal. Right?

[A]

Yes. So, I mean, here's a hypothetical. If the case had involved like Telegram, let's say, and the case there was, oh, this person deleted the app and the FBI managed to get Telegram messages through the iPhone notification database. We would still write that story. That would be very interesting as well. It's just that in this case, it happened to be Signal. Now, of course, all messaging apps send notifications. That's the entire point. So you know that you've received a message and that's going to be WhatsApp iMessage, Telegram Signal Wickr session, which is shutting down soon because it's not getting much funding. So it is very much chat app agnostic. What this highlights is a much more fundamental friction between secure messaging apps, which might do everything they could possibly do and the phone they're running on and the operating system. It's not like signal doesn't have control over the over, you know, the operating system by phone, it doesn't have control over Android, you know, from Pixel phones or whatever. There is a friction there where some data from a secure communications app may sort of like accidentally, inadvertently be stored elsewhere in the phone. So, yes, it's not a signal problem. It can be a Telegram or WhatsApp, like what, whatever. It's going to impact probably those as well. I guess just the last thing I'll say is that after I published this sort of as suspected, a couple of people reached out with different cases that they found mentioned signal messages being forensically extracted because they were stored in the notification database. One I'm looking at which right now, and I haven't fully looked into the context of it, but I believe it's a hate crime, like anti Semitic attacks or at least vandalism. And one part of the document says phone notifications that captured incoming signal messaging, end quote. So it's even more explicit in that court record. Now, if I'd seen that court record a while ago, I could have just used that to write a story rather than quite painfully trying to find two people who were in the courtroom to hear the FBI speak. But that's what we know now. And I don't know, I think this is very, very useful information for people to know. Even if your phone isn't going to be seized or searched by a third party, you still now understand the limits of a secure messaging app. All right, we'll leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about a bunch of Matthew's reporting about the pushback to data centers being built, not just in Maine, but actually around the country as well. We'll be right back after this.

[C]

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[D]

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[C]

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[D]

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[C]

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[E]

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[A]

All right, and we are back. Matthew, this is one you wrote. Maine is close to passing a moratorium on new data centers. So I mean, there's a lot to unravel here, but let's just keep it specific at first. What exactly is this new bill trying to stop the construction of? Is it like all new data centers? Like, what's the deal?

[D]

Anything over 20 megawatts and it's a moratorium. It's not necessarily like a full stop. It's more of a let's stop so we can build data centers intelligently. So it stops new construction of Data centers over 20 megawatts until November 2027. And it calls for something they're calling the Main Data Center Coordination Council, which is basically like a group that's going to come together and shepherd data center construction a little bit better and ask questions about like water and noise management and electricity bills.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of stuff. Even though, as you say, it's not like a full on ban or block or stoppage, it sounds like it almost gives the state some space and time and powers to figure out, wait, do we actually want to have this data center or not?

[D]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's kind of a market change and it's one of many market change that I'm kind of seeing as these data centers are constructed. Because for the past year or so what happens is developer that's maybe been incorporated in the last six months shows up in a small town with a population under 50,000. They make a pitch behind closed doors to city council members members. They get the city council members to sign a non disclosure agreement. And the public usually learns about the building of a data center a couple weeks before it starts.

[A]

Yeah. Or when there's a data center.

[D]

Or when there's a data center. Yeah, literally. And like that has happened kind of repeatedly across the country. And you're starting to see these big pushbacks here. And one of the ones that was kind of in Maine that happened that kind of precipitated this event. And some of the locals there, including the main monitor, really broke. The story is that they were going to build this thing in an old mill building. And it was again, they went, these developers, it was going to be a $300 million project. They went to the city council kind of behind closed doors, and the city council kind of balked and the whole thing fell apart and the city council kind of backed off. And one of the reasons the whole thing fell apart is the city council was like, you guys didn't give us enough time. You wanted us to vote on this. You gave us the information six days before the public was set to vote on it. This doesn't work for us. And that's one of the only instances of the city council itself kind of standing up to these data centers that I've seen. And that happened in Maine. So you can tell that up there they're thinking about things a little bit.

[A]

Yeah. But they only know about that because it was revealed in this journalistic report.

[D]

Right. So it was the main monitor and another one of the locals there.

[A]

Main focus.

[D]

Main focus. Thank you.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Broke this open and they went and talked to the city council and kind of picked through everything and figured everything out. And then we didn't have this on the show. Notes, But I thought it was interesting of a piece with this. Did you see what happened in Missouri? Politico reported on this yesterday.

[A]

Go on.

[D]

Small town, 12,000 people Data center came in. They voted out the city council that proposed this thing, and now they are trying to remove their mayor. Wow.

[A]

All because of this data center stuff.

[D]

All because of a proposed $6 billion data center. And this again, small St. Louis suburb of 12,000 people.

[A]

I'm going to ask you to speculate a little bit. So, listeners, please don't take this. Please don't take this too seriously, because I'm going to ask you to read the minds of all of these tech companies. But do you think that you have meta rolling out data centers, various other companies as well? Do you think they factored in that, oh, holy shit, people might really not want this stuff in their backyard? And not only that, they might actually be effective, maybe pushing out leaders who are approving it, that sort of thing. Like, do you think that this has been factored in at all?

[D]

I don't think it's been factored in, but I think there's something else going on here. Like, would meta or Google or some of the other big tech companies build a data center? They're usually built smarter at it. I think what we're actually seeing going on in places like Maine and places like Missouri and in some of the other small communities that have been talking to

[C]

are

[D]

companies, construction companies, building data centers that maybe don't have clients yet and they're jumping onto a boom.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Because this is one of the questions I always ask is who are the clients for this thing, who's going in? And most of the time they either say the clients are pending, we don't know who they are, or the clients are hidden by a non disclosure agreement. And in my experience when it's meta, when it's one of the big companies, they will usually just tell you they're going to be there. That's like this Fermi thing in Amarillo that we reported on where they're building. The plan is to build four nuclear reactors in the desert. They don't, they like won't tell you who the clients are and it's just, it's odd.

[A]

Well, and you sort of let you listed out like three options there. Like the pending, they tell you the clients or there's an NDA. The pending one is the most interesting there because as you're suggesting, it's like, well, we'll build it, we'll piss off a lot of people and then we'll figure out who to sell this compute to or whatever it is later.

[D]

I think that there's a lot, I think when all of this kind of shakes out in a couple years, I think we're going to find out that there was a kind of this real estate rush where people were trying to build out a lot of compute because they thought that AI was going to be the big thing and maybe demand was oversold. I think there's a lot of people building out compute that don't have people to sell the compute to yet. And they just assume they're going to be able to.

[A]

Yeah, or they perhaps just assume or think that they can just build it and they won't get this pushback which sort of leads to the second story, which I think we did speak about this on the podcast before, but there's been, you know, you got a little bit of new information and I think then we'll talk about the more nationwide context as well. But the headline of this one was Farmer Arrested for Speaking Too Long at Data Center Town Hall Vows to fight. We'll talk about the fighting back in a second, the new information, but just give us a recap of who this farmer is and why they were arrested sort of at this town hall.

[D]

So there was a town hall in Oklahoma at a university. The city of Claremore had actually rented out the university space because they knew that this town hall about the data center, the Project Mustang, it's called was going to be a big deal. And they had also established rules limiting the amount of speaking time for people at this town hall to three minutes. Gentleman named Darren Blanchard, who's a farmer from Mounds, which is about 50 minutes away from where the town hall is, gets up to speak. He's got some documents, he's talking and he goes over his time. And the city council tells him to stop talking. He goes over his time by about 30 seconds. The police push forward. He's kind of escorted to the front. He attempts to give some of the documents that he's got to the city council, at which point they. The city council directs him to be arrested. And the police do. They arrest him. They take him to Rogers County Jail and lead him out in handcuffs. The crowd is booing and he's charged with trespass, which is. Has a fine of $200.

[A]

Right. So obviously it is pretty crazy to arrest somebody for going slightly over their allotted time. Like it didn't seem they were being disruptive, violent, aggressive, anything like that. Just talking about a data centre. So that happens. You then get, I think, the police report related to that arrest. Sometimes these have a lot of information, sometimes they just have a little. But what sort of nuggets, if any, did we get out of that before we talk about the fighting back?

[D]

It was interesting because I sent the request to the city immediately when we wrote the initial story after I saw the fight footage.

[A]

And when did we write the original one?

[D]

A few months ago, in February, after his arrest. Like right after February 17, I believe, is the day that he was arrested.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And they finally got back to me and sent me the police report last week. And it kind of just has this very dry accounting of exactly what we saw and confirms that the city manager, John Fury, told was kind of the person directing the police to have Blanchard removed. And that Sergeant Singer, who's the. Who's the sergeant. Police sergeant on hand, is the one that directed him to be arrested for trespassing at Fury's behest, it seems. So kind of. That's really the kind of nuggets that we get from the police report. And also that's where we learn about the penalty for trespass. And then that's what he was charged with.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of clarifying the exact charges and chronology from the perspective of the authorities that arrest him. Yeah. So how is he planning to fight back exactly?

[D]

Well, it's interesting because it was kind of this thing where people that were watching the case expected that he would go in as it's a municipal charge, you would go in and they would dismiss it. This city not. Did not dismiss it. They want their $200. First of all, he is, I would say he's turned this into a media opportunity and is like attending all of the Project Mustang rallies and talking about it and has kind of become the face of the anti data center movement there in Oklahoma. And he's got. He's lawyered up. He's got a lawyer and they're fighting it. And I have talked to the lawyer a little bit and I have a couple things to share from that. That, that we have not reported out yet. That I'll share on the podcast now.

[A]

Sure.

[D]

She told me that, that a. The city attorney was on site and witnessed the arrest and that she believes that, you know, I'll. I'll just quote her directly. The attorney for city refuses to recuse himself even though he is an eyewitness to the arrest. This is a constitutional and ethical violation which requires recusal of the prosecutor. In addition, we have requested open records from the city to support our defense, and they have told us that it will be $16,500 to process these records. This is a blatant violation of our state's open records laws. So we will. We will be fighting that as well. And there's the first. She's got to respond to litigation on the 17th, and there's court motions on the 7th, and there's no trial date yet for a $200 trespassing charge at the municipal level.

[A]

I mean, of course, every lawyer hopes to win and every lawyer thinks they're going to win, or at least, you know, that's what they project. Have they indicated to you, this attorney, have they indicated, like, how confident they are, like, in this or.

[D]

They have not. I mean, they've spoken to some, like, local media there in Tulsa, I believe, Tulsa News 8, and said that they're confident, but they've not communicated that to me.

[A]

Sure. Just didn't want to tell you for some reason. Well, yeah, of course. You will definitely keep an eye on that. But let's zoom out for just a second because the article also mentions, or rather these two articles also mention sort of other stuff happening around the country. I think you mentioned the Missouri case. Is there anything else happening nationwide when it comes to sort of the pushback around data centers?

[D]

I would say yeah. I mean, there are similar ballot measures to what's happening in AI and of course, they're slightly varied. Everywhere you go, there's some in Monterey Park, California, in Augusta Township, Michigan, and in Janesville, Wisconsin, of course, I talked about Missouri, voting out their city council and just kind of there's a, I would say a brewing discontent and organized pushback against these data centers. The more they crop up, as I like, when you live next to one, you see your electricity bill spike, the water gets worse, and they're very, very noisy. And you can record a video and show everyone exactly how noisy the data center is and put it online and no one wants to live next to that. And there's a repeated pattern of these data centers going into communities of under 50,000 people. And it's that kind of over and over again, small towns where they kind of think they can push people over and they're finding that it's not working out the way they thought. There's one near where I live that's this similar kind of thing where it's like a low income small town where they're just kind of trying to force in this data center and no one kind of knows what it's for. And there's. On top of this, you had like, I don't know how closely I want to connect this, but like Sam Altman's house gets a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. Yeah, right. There's an anti AI and anti data center kind of pushback brewing in mood in the country that is not just at the legislative level. And I'm in some, like, I'm in some groups where I'm just kind of watching people organize and there's a lot of grassroots organization and a lot of people talking about what to do at a community level and like sharing information across different communities about what worked for us, what didn't work for us, how to talk to these different companies. That's what I'm seeing.

[A]

Yeah. It reminds me somewhat of the flock pushback and the flock reporting in that, you know, with this AI stuff as you just laid out, it's very much on a. On a local, if not like a hyperlocal level. It's not really a federal level. Right. The federal government is embracing AI and development and all of that. And it's similar to the flock stuff where I don't even know if it comes across as a federal issue really to anybody, because I don't think it is. But there is this local pushback and individual towns saying, hey, actually we don't want these AI enabled cameras or we want to have a conversation. And it turns out they actually some cities do want them and they've had that conversation and that's good. And it even varies. You have, of course, the town hall meetings about Flock, just like you do with the AI stuff. You also have people taking more direct action, like vandalising Flock cameras, which kind of similar to the Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house, I guess. Obviously the Molotov cocktail is much worse than vandalising a camera, but I see the frou line that you're drawing there.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, it's very similar. People are kind of waking up to the way that tech is directly affecting them and they're pushing back.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. All right, we'll leave that there. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about Marathon. You can subscribe and gain access to that content as 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with with Kaleidoscope and Alyssa Midcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really does help us out. This has been 404 Media. We'll see you again next week.

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