Wiki · hypothesis · H3

Consumer Surveillance

Emerging — under test What the compute is for, who it watches, and who's paying.

What is the compute for, and is the public subsidizing surveillance of itself?

A third reading: the operators behind shell LLCs, the public-subsidy stack that pulls them in, and the capital and data flows the facilities sit on. The consumer-surveillance thesis — opening now, mostly under investigation, with Lima's abatement on record. An end-use sub-thesis (#904): these facilities are infrastructure nodes in a consumer surveillance apparatus — behavioral tracking, financial-transaction processing, or similar mass-scale surveillance of individual consumer activity, financed in part by the public subsidies the same communities provide.

See the same question as a cross-site scorecard on the network directory →

The matrix

5 cells

Every (site × H3) evidence cell committed under this reading — each a signal strength and an evidence tag, provenanced. A federal or corporate nexus is a signal, not a verdict.

Lima [verified] Anchor case capture

operator

Project BOSC

capital

CRA #548-25 · 15 yr / 75%

docs/ECONOMICS.md Community Reinvestment Area agreement #548-25 — a 15-year, 75% real-property tax abatement on the Project BOSC build — is on the public record. The named counterparty behind the campus LLC remains the open question.
Fort Wayne [inference] Moderate end-use

operator

Hatchworks LLC (Google shell — Mountain View CA mailing, Zodiac parcels)

end use

consumer_surveillance [inference]

data/extracted/fort-wayne/gis-parcels.yaml Hatchworks LLC holds 11 parcels in the Zodiac assemblage (Jan-2024 + Oct-2025 acquisition tranches). Mountain View CA mailing address + entity structure consistent with a Google data-center shell. Google's primary revenue stream is consumer behavioral advertising / data analytics — consumer_surveillance is the inferred end-use. Operator principal not yet confirmed via SOS/LEI filing; tag stays inference until confirmed. See #904.
New Albany · Licking [inference] Moderate

operator

Hyperscaler cluster (inferred)

capital

JobsOhio · TIF (inference)

docs/ECONOMICS.md The operator is inferred from the New Albany hyperscaler cluster; the JobsOhio / TIF incentive stack is inferred from the regional pattern — verify each against the public record before promoting the tag past inference. Tracking candidate (epic #485).
Columbus [open] Under investigation

capital

Enterprise-zone abatement (signal)
Hamilton · Middletown [open] Under investigation

capital

Municipal power + CRA (signal)

What would confirm it

The evidence this reading predicts — what a site should show if the hypothesis holds. Absence is not disproof; it's an [open] thread.

a named operator behind a shell LLC (deed / SOS / LEI trail)
a public-subsidy instrument on record (CRA / TIF / enterprise-zone abatement)
a capital or data-flow linkage tying the site to a known operator
the operator's active consumer-facing product lines at the time of the permit application (10-K / AWS availability-zone announcement / product launch timeline)
a product classification tying the compute to a consumer surveillance application class: behavioral-advertising, financial-transaction, consumer-credit, AI-inference over consumer data

Concepts it bears on

Glossary terms this reading names.

Entities it bears on

Parties in the record this reading names.

Open questions

The [open] cells under this reading, on the open-questions board.

Open thread — H3 Consumer Surveillance @ columbus · H3 Consumer Surveillance
Open thread — H3 Consumer Surveillance @ hamilton-middletown · H3 Consumer Surveillance