Local officials in Bluffdale, Utah, have voted to help keep the NSA's new data center hidden from public view.

Back in March, we introduced you to Nate Carlisle, a Salt Lake Tribune reporter who was waging war with local officials to learn a simple fact about the NSA's sprawling data center, just completed in nearby Bluffdale.

Carlisle wanted to learn how much water the data center was using, hoping to gain at least some small insight into the agency's efforts to facilitate its massive surveillance efforts through the facility, but local officials denied his public records request after the NSA warned that this information could be used to "determine the computing power and capacities of the Utah Data Center."

In the end, Carlisle appealed to the Utah State Records Committee–and won. He discovered that the data center was using a lot less water than the 1.7 million gallons per day projected in planning documents. And that's led to speculation that the glitch-filled data colossus may still not be fully online.

But his victory was short-lived. Last week, the Bluffdale Town Council voted to act as its own records panel, effectively removing the state from the decision-making process when it comes to disclosing the NSA's water bill. As far as Carlisle is concerned, that's going to make it "much harder" to get public records about the data center.