Incidents gathered from public reporting around the world. Each one links to the articles it came from. None of it is a finding that anyone broke the law.
Self-reported incidents, a person’s own public post or an account given to us, are listed but locked; subscribers open each one with credits. Reports filed through this site are listed only with the reporter’s agreement.
Press reportingSelf-reported: a person’s own public post · 10 creditsSelf-reported: told to us directly · 25 credits
Massachusetts financial consultant Mozart Saint Cyr leads a proposed class of job applicants who say JPMorgan Chase's use of HireVue one-way video interviews amounted to a lie detector test banned by state law. After a federal judge dismissed the case, they asked the First Circuit to revive it.
A Hangzhou tech company told a quality-assurance supervisor, surnamed Zhou, that AI could do his job, offered him a demotion with a 40% pay cut, and fired him when he refused. The Hangzhou intermediate court ruled the dismissal unlawful and ordered 260,000 yuan in compensation.
California truck driver Rodrigo Garcia sued his former employer, Figueroa Tank Lines, and Samsara, maker of its AI-powered in-cab video surveillance, saying his August 2025 dismissal was whistleblower retaliation and that the monitoring invaded his privacy without consent.
A 24-year-old in New South Wales applied for a part-time job at Woolworths and went through two AI interviews, one with a text chatbot and one recorded on voice and video, without speaking to any person. He was rejected six weeks later and called the process dystopian.
The ACLU filed complaints with state and federal agencies on behalf of a deaf, Indigenous employee of Intuit who was denied a promotion after an automated HireVue video interview. The tool did not caption all audible questions and could not accurately transcribe her speech, which the complaint says disadvantaged her because of her disability and race.
Daniel Swanson, a 24-year IBM manager in Austin, sued IBM in federal court, saying he was fired at 48 and then rejected for other roles because IBM's AI-driven HR screening software was programmed to favour younger workers. IBM denies the claims.
CVS reached a tentative settlement of a proposed class action by a Massachusetts job applicant who said his 2021 HireVue video interview was analysed with Affectiva's AI to track facial expressions without notice, amounting to a lie detector test banned by state law. He could not opt out or challenge the assessment, and was not hired.
A contractor for the Project Blue data centre near Tucson was cited for violating a permit that controls dust-causing activities, facing penalties of up to $10,000 a day, one week after Tucson officials accused the company of using city water without authorisation.
Residents along North State Line Road in Karnack, Texas, say construction of a data centre is causing excessive noise, damaging their road and bringing poor traffic control, disrupting daily life.
Since autumn 2023, residents along KY-1036 in Wolfe County, Kentucky, have lived with a constant industrial hum from cooling fans at Artemis Power Tech's data centre, which was set up next to their homes without notice. A tarp added around the fencing did not stop the noise, which a 40-year resident says she has never got used to and believes hurts her property's value.
Ten residents of Lowell, Massachusetts, sued the state environmental regulator and Markley Group over the expansion of Markley's 352,000-square-foot data centre in a dense neighbourhood to 27 diesel backup generators and 16 cooling towers. They cite diesel emissions, industrial noise, cooling-tower mist and dust, and say they were denied a proper chance to challenge the approval.
Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality fined Amazon Data Services $10,400 for violating air and water pollution permits at its data centres in Hermiston and Boardman in 2023 and 2024, after reports that their operations had affected local air and water quality.
Maryland's Office of People's Counsel filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission against grid operator PJM, saying its cost allocation would make Maryland households pay about $1.6 billion over a decade for transmission built to serve data centres in other states, from which they do not benefit.
A company building a new data centre in Sullivan County, Indiana, accidentally hit a power line that runs four tornado sirens, leaving part of the county's warning system offline during a period of possible severe weather, the county emergency management agency said.
NV Energy told Liberty Utilities, which serves about 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents, that it will stop supplying power after May 2027 because it needs the capacity for data centres. The region has less than a year to find another source of electricity.
A homeowners' association in Stillwater, Oklahoma, sued Google, alleging runoff from construction of its new data centre is damaging the neighbourhood's pond.
Neighbours of the PAX-1 (Pennsylvania Digital 1) data centre under construction in Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, say blasting and drilling rattle their homes and make it impossible to be outdoors. A resident of a nearby mobile home community reported new cracks in her home after the blasts.
Runoff from construction of the Monarch Compute Campus, a data centre project of Fidelis New Energy with Nscale, flooded homes along University Lane in Mason County, West Virginia, after heavy rain when a section of silt fencing gave way. Residents reported water under their houses and fear mould. The site manager said the company would cover cleanup and repairs; the neighbourhood flooded again in July.
Virginia's environmental regulator fined Amazon Data Services $72,067.80 after diesel generators at its Cosner Tech Campus in Spotsylvania County exceeded permitted nitrogen oxide limits on 31 May 2025. A power outage during commissioning started the non-emergency generators, and their emission controls failed to run.
Cheyenne's Board of Public Utilities traced a contamination of the city's wastewater reuse system with the bacterium Cupriavidus gilardii to Goat Systems, a company building an 800,000-square-foot data centre campus reported to be Meta's, and permanently revoked its discharge privileges. The reuse system's start for the year was delayed while the bacteria were flushed out; the city paused discharges from data centres. Meta has appealed the violation notice.
An Earth Journalism Network investigation reports that the data centre corridor growing in Gautam Buddh Nagar (Greater Noida), Uttar Pradesh, is drawing on groundwater while local wells run dry.
Flint Riverkeeper and local residents filed a notice of intent to sue QTS, alleging its Fayetteville, Georgia, data centre campus violated the Clean Water Act, according to 11Alive.
Residents of the Annelise Park subdivision in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed unusually low water pressure. The county utility found two industrial water hookups feeding the QTS data centre campus, one installed without its knowledge and one not billed, and charged QTS $147,474 for more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water, far above the agreed peak limit. QTS paid and said the unmetered use happened during a switch to smart meters.
Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency opened an investigation after residents complained of a persistent humming, mostly at night, from the new Echelon DUB10 data centre in Clondalkin, west Dublin, from late July 2026. Residents up to 2 km away report lost sleep, and one living 500 metres away logged start-up noise every few minutes after midnight; others filmed thick black smoke from generator chimneys. The operator says it has applied mitigation and is investigating.
Each incident is written from the reporting or the account it cites. A report is an allegation, not a finding.
