Seattle Enacts Nation’s First Ban On ‘Surveillance Pricing’ in Grocery Stores
Seattle, Washington, has become the first city in the U.S. to ban so-called surveillance pricing in grocery stores, making it so grocery stores can’t use personal data and artificial intelligence algorithms to set different prices for individual customers.
Dubbed the “Fair Pricing” policy, the legislation bars large online and brick-and-mortar grocery retailers from using people’s employment status, race, gender, browser history, social media activity or chatbot conversations to set customer prices. Moving forward, grocers will instead be required to clearly post prices that are consistent across all customers.
“Food is an essential good that’s getting more expensive all the time,” said Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson in a September 23 release. “People have been clear: they don’t want their data fed into algorithms that decide how much they pay at the grocery store.”
Surveillance pricing is used across a variety of industries to determine the highest price a customer will pay for a product or service, based on their personal data and other market trends, the Electronic Privacy Information Center explains. A Fe...