A statewide moratorium doesn’t fix the real issues.
That’s why I wrote the bills to actually close the loopholes. Four bills, ready to file. One sets the rules for the data center itself. The other three deal with what these places can do.
Full text of each is linked below. Nothing here is a concept or a principle or a campaign promise. Actual solutions to actual problems.
The Data Center itself
Right now, a data center could be built in our state without a vote from anybody. This stops that. Before anything gets built, the county or city must hold a public hearing and vote in the open. Neighbors within a mile get written notice thirty days ahead. The developer files a report covering water, power, noise, traffic, emergency services, and cleanup, and pays for it themselves.
The water math has to be done against the worst drought on record, not an average year. The power company has to certify in writing it can actually serve the load. When the grid is stressed in January, the data center powers down before your house does. Cleanup is bonded before construction starts, and a promise from a parent company doesn't count.
And it bans nondisclosure agreements for public officials, so development happens above the table.
A real company can meet all of this without breaking stride. A shell company flipping a rezoning can't.
License Plate Readers
There's hundreds of ALPR cameras across South Dakota, and they're governed less strictly than simple red-light cameras.
Stolen cars, warrants, and missing person alerts still work exactly as they do now. What this stops is the searchable history. Scans get deleted in 48 hours unless they hit on something. Looking backward through retained data takes a warrant. No facial recognition. No selling the data. No standing arrangement that lets an agency in another state search where you drove in Carpenter without a judge signing off.
If a case matters, you look now. If you're searching three weeks later, you're building a file on a specific person, and that's what warrants are for.
Government Data Purchases
The government can't take your location history without a warrant, but they can buy it from data brokers.
Data brokers sell where you've been, who you called, what you searched, your financial and health records. Agencies buy it and skip the warrant entirely. This bill says if they'd need a warrant to take it, they can't purchase it, accept it as a gift, get it as a free trial, or route it through a task force.
Montana passed this unanimously last year, sponsored by a Republican. Time to bring it to South Dakota.
Synthetic Likeness and Voice Fraud
A cloned voice calls your mother asking for bail money.
The caller is usually overseas. The person who picks up the cash is here. This bill raises the penalty one class when a fake voice or image is used to steal, and it gives the person whose voice was cloned somebody to sue.
Parody, satire, news, and commentary are exempt. This is a fraud law, not a speech law.