In My Opinion - by Bob Ruth
May 19, 2026 — Bob Ruth
In My Opinion (IMO) bumped into a longtime acquaintance recently who offered a new reason for opposing the massive data center being proposed for Grove City — the issue of privacy.
The acquaintance and IMO are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The acquaintance is one of the leaders of the Grove City Patriots, a conservative group. IMO is a liberal Democrat.
But to IMO’s pleasant surprise, the acquaintance said, “Bob, we’ve finally found something we can both agree on.”
The acquaintance said one of the reasons she opposes data centers like the one being proposed for Grove City revolves around privacy. “What’s going on in those data centers?” she asked.
The brief encounter following the May meeting of the Jackson Township trustees was a bit of an epiphany for IMO. Many conservatives — along with many liberals — are legitimately worried about the huge amount of personal information being collected from any American who uses a laptop computer and/or a cell phone.
Until the encounter, IMO had never thought about the privacy issue. And the accidental meeting reminded IMO that Ohio’s data center controversy is an issue that crosses ideological lines. This is not a conservative vs. liberal issue. It’s much like Ohio State football. I may be a liberal. You may be a conservative. But we both can be ardent fans of the Buckeyes.
Here’s what IMO’s research has revealed about privacy and data centers:
High-tech companies, other corporations, retailers, some government agencies and a whole host of additional entities have the ability to collect and manipulate the most intimate personal information on virtually all of us. Talk about Big Brother!
Data centers don’t do the actual manipulating. They just store the data. The companies and agencies — the so-called data owners — then take the billions of information bits stored in the centers and manipulate them.
The process allows data owners to re-configure this information into comprehensive profiles on each of us. The final product, too often, allows strangers to know more about us than our spouses or parents. It’s the kind of over-reach that even George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 didn’t foresee.
Just another reason to urge City Council members to reject — or, at the very least, enact a 12-month moratorium on — the Grove City hyper-scale data center.
