“The $1.7bn facility, two years in the making, will soon host supercomputers to store gargantuan quantities of data from emails, phone calls, Google searches and other sources. It was designed to be largely anonymous. Instead, after Guardian disclosures of data-mining programs involving millions of Americans, the Utah Data Center provokes an urgent question: what exactly will it do? ‘Revelations about surveillance did not prove abuse of power,’ said Bluffdale’s mayor, Derk Timothy. ‘I don’t think they crossed the line. They’ve been good partners to us, especially when it comes to water. They’ve been building that facility as if they’re going to stay forever.’”
