Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much. But a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday seemed to be a rare point of bipartisan agreement. Surveillance pricing, the practice of companies using personal data to adjust the prices of goods, is really bad. But the question remains: Will Congress actually do anything to regulate it? The hearing was held by the Senate Judiciary Committee and titled, “Your Data, Their Profit: the Consumer Cost of AI Surveillance Pricing.” Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, kicked off the hearing by laying into a number of companies, including Staples, Target, Lyft, and Amazon, all of which he claims have engaged in surveillance pricing with the help of AI tools. “This is one of the biggest scams in American history—this marriage between the AI industry and these mega corporations,” said Hawley, “and they’re trying to pull it off against every American consumer.”
“AI surveillance pricing is the unholy trinity of everything Americans hate: spying on people, ripping them off, and taking away jobs,” Hawley continued. Hawley seemed particularly incensed about the fact that Kroger made an enormous amount of money selling the data on its customers to other companies. “Kroger made half a billion dollars by tracking its customers in store and online and then selling that to other people,” explained the senator.
