By Chris Jennewein, Times of San Diego, a member of the San Diego Online News Association
Photo: President Donald Trump addresses Congress. Screenshot from C-SPAN
March 5, 2025 (Washington, D.C.) - President Donald Trump told Congress Tuesday that “the American dream is surging bigger and better than ever before” and promised that new tariffs on Mexico — despite worrying San Diego businesses — will help achieve that goal.
Local Assemblyman working to minimize surveillance pricing, while new FTC chairman blocks public comments
By G. A. McNeeley
March 5, 2025 (San Diego) -- Most people might not know that companies with an online presence are using personal information about customer’s buying habits to charge them a higher price for products, if they think you’re likely to pay it. This is a practice known as “surveillance pricing.”
This practice has spread in recent years, according to consumer and privacy watchdogs, and it’s become increasingly difficult to escape, no matter how often we clear our cookies or tighten our privacy settings.
But with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman blocking consumer comments and not taking action at a national level, state legislators are stepping up to the plate.
San Diego Assemblyman Introduces Bill To Prohibit Surveillance Pricing
Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-78) from San Diego told KPBS, “What we have found is a growing body of evidence where companies are being encouraged to use surveillance pricing, using your own personal data from your cell phone, from the IP address attached to your home computer, to modulate the pricing on goods and services that you pay.”
“That runs completely afoul to what we believe should be a direct, very basic consumer interest that you should pay the same price for the same product, regardless of who you are,” Ward adds.
Ward has introduced AB-446 (2025-2026 Legislative Session), to prohibit surveillance pricing in California.
“At a time when prices for basic necessities are rising across the board, it is more critical than ever to ensure that people are not being unfairly charged higher prices due to their actual or perceived characteristics,” said Ward, in a press release. “The right to fair pricing should not be a privilege for the few but a fundamental protection for all. One product, one price.”
Ward pointed out that price discrimination can prey on people in poorer neighborhoods.
“If they are farther away from some stores and it’s a lot harder to get certain products, companies know this and they are increasing the prices for some products at those very stores because you don’t have as many options,” Ward told KPBS.
Ward’s staff said his assembly bill, AB-446, will soon be heard by the California Assembly’s privacy committee.
Other California Lawmakers Are In Agreement
In many cases, surveillance pricing is legal, but some California lawmakers want to change that.
“You walk into a grocery store, you’re surveilled,” Kristin Heidelbach told KQED. Heidelbach is the Legislative Director for United Food & Commercial Workers Western States Council, which is backing AB-446, which “would prohibit a person from setting a price offered to a consumer-based, in whole or in part, upon personally identifiable information, as defined, gathered through an electronic surveillance technology, as defined, including electronic shelving labels.”
“They have all the tools they need to track you from the time you walk inside the grocery store,” Heidelbach added. “Then retailers take those data points, and they will adjust the price… while you’re standing in a store. They can track on your phone how many times you’ve looked up something. You go to pick up a gallon of milk, and it’s one price, and then by the time you get up to the front, the price has already fluctuated.”
California already has some protections in place in the form of The California Consumer Privacy Act, which limits the amount of information that businesses can collect and use to make decisions about consumers. “But, more can be done,” Maureen Mahoney, Deputy Director of Policy & Legislation for the California Privacy Protection Agency, wrote in an email to KQED.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to worry that where they live or how they browse a store will be used to determine how much they pay for important purchases,” Mahoney added, in her email.
State Senator Aisha Wahab has introduced a couple of bills (SB-384 and SB-259) that would restrict companies from using algorithms for dynamic pricing. She said she expects pushback from a variety of industries, and not just in Silicon Valley, as dynamic pricing has become a big money maker.
“But I have always seen my job as a policymaker is to put safeguards there to protect the average person,” Wahab told KQED.
With an established history of leading in the consumer privacy space, California lawmakers are joining those in other states like Colorado, Georgia, and Illinois to pick up where federal regulators are expected to leave off.
FTC Publishes Surveillance Pricing Report
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its preliminary “surveillance pricing” report, which examined the hidden techniques companies can use when determining how much to charge particular individuals.
The FTC found that retailers use data such as scrolling habits, purchase history, and location in charging people different prices for the same product. Even how long we take to respond and engage with emails is tracked and incorporated into pricing.
The variables used by companies include, “where the consumer is, who the consumer is, what the consumer is doing, and prior actions a consumer has taken, such as clicking on a specific button or element on webpage, watching a video, or adding a particular item to their cart or wish list,” said the FTC study.
According to the report, companies could collect “real-time information about a person’s browsing and transaction history,” and then decide whether to offer coupons based on assumptions derived from that data.
The FTC’s report also cited how corporate consultants have been pushing for surveillance pricing. “Personalized pricing strategies, once considered a futuristic concept, have become a cornerstone of modern business strategy,” said the Cortado Group.
The FTC study is only preliminary, and doesn’t state whether the pricing is illegal or not.
New FTC Chairman Cancels Request For Public Comments
When the FTC initially published the report, it sought input from consumers and businesses about how surveillance pricing had affected them. After President Donald Trump took office, new FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson canceled the agency’s request for public comments to continue the inquiry.
Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak dissented from the decision to release the report, arguing that it was premature.
“The Commission should allow staff to do its work and issue a final, fact-based report, rather than rush to meet a nakedly political deadline to present something, anything, to the public,” they stated last week.
Ferguson, the new Trump appointed FTC chairman, is a Big Law alumni who defended large companies from antitrust cases and opposed consumer gains such as the commission’s non-compete ban. He opposed releasing the pricing study, and one of the first things he did as chairman was to shut down public comments for it. So it looks like this might be the end of the FTC looking into surveillance pricing.
Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya called attention in a statement to Ferguson's move, writing that one of his first acts as agency head was “to quietly remove the opportunity for the public to comment” on surveillance pricing.
It’s too early in California’s legislative session to determine which prospective measures will succeed in making it to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. It’s common practice for lawmakers to change a measure’s language substantially as it moves through committees with the help of other lawmakers, lobbyists, and privacy and consumer advocates.
But the study said there is much more work to do. This means it is up to states like California to continue the work the FTC started, in the form of legislation, advocacy and legal action, as the study only presents a sliver of information the FTC hopes to acquire. As the study says, there is a lot they still don’t know about how surveillance pricing works.
Sources:
https://www.kqed.org/news/12028137/california-lawmakers-take-on-predatory-surveillance-pricing
https://consumerwatchdog.org/privacy/surveillance-pricing-is-up-to-us-now/
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-statement-emergency-motion.pdf
By Miriam Raftery
March 3, 2025 (Washington D.C.) – Threats issued by President Donald Trump targeting colleges, universities and student protesters are illegal and unconstitutional, according to legal and civil liberties experts.
Today, Trump posted on his social media account, “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or depending on on the crime, arrested.NO MASKS!”
The post comes on the heels of two executive orders issued by Trump which seek to pressure higher education officials to target immigrant students and staff for exercising First Amendment freedom of spech rights, including pro-Palestinian protesterrs or students critical of the U.S. government, culture, institutions or founding principals. Today's Truth Social post goes further, demanding that even students who are U.S. citizens be expelled and imprisoned for participating in campus protests if deemed "illegal.".
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have both issued statements criticizing Trump’s actions for pressuring colleges and universities to engage in conduct that would violate the U.S. Constitution and other laws. While violence and/or intimidation of individuals based on religious views, such as anti-Semitism, or national origin are already illegal and should not be tolerated on campuses, freedom to express controversial ideas is a core principal of higher education—and the ability to criticize governments and their policies is a critical component of our democracy, the civil rights legal experts make clear.
Below are their statements, both issued today.
Foundation for Individual Rights
Statement on President Trump’s Truth Social post threatening funding cuts for ‘illegal protests’
President Trump posted a message on Truth Social this morning that put social media and college campuses on high alert. ...
Colleges can and should respond to unlawful conduct, but the president does not have unilateral authority to revoke federal funds, even for colleges that allow “illegal” protests.
If a college runs afoul of anti-discrimination laws like Title VI or Title IX, the government may ultimately deny the institution federal funding by taking it to federal court, or via notice to Congress and an administrative hearing. It is not simply a discretionary decision that the president can make.
President Trump also lacks the authority to expel individual students, who are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private campuses as well.
Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Paired with President Trump’s 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism, and his January order threatening to deport international students for engaging in protected expression, students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.
As FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask questions later.
Even the most controversial political speech is protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court reminds us, in America, we don’t use the law to punish those with whom we disagree. Instead, “[a]s a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
Misconduct or criminality — like true threats, vandalism, or discriminatory harassment, properly defined — is not protected by the First Amendment. In fact, discouraging and punishing such behavior is often vital to ensuring that others are able to peacefully make their voices heard.
However, students who engage in misconduct must still receive due process — whether through a campus or criminal tribunal. This requires fair, consistent application of existing law or policy, in a manner that respects students’ rights.
President Trump needs to stand by his past promise to be a champion for free expression. That means doing so for all views — including those his administration dislikes.
American Civil Liberties Union
After Trump Admin Threats, ACLU Sends Letter of Support to Universities, Urging Them to Protect Campus Speech
ACLU makes clear the government cannot threaten funding to universities for fostering an environment of free speech and free inquiry
The American Civil Liberties Union today published an open letter to colleges and universities nationwide urging them to reject any federal pressure to surveil or punish international students and faculty based on constitutionally protected speech. This letter is prompted by two executive orders — Executive Order 14161, titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats” signed on Jan. 20, 2025, and Executive Order 14188, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” signed on Jan. 29, 2025 — and related communications from the White House.
The guidance is especially timely after an early morning Truth Social post from President Trump threatening to stop federal funding for “any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” and proposing that “agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on U.S. college campuses so blatantly. We stand in solidarity with university leaders in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU and co-author of the letter. “Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities.”
According to the ACLU, the White House is attempting to pressure university officials to target immigrant and international students, faculty, and staff, including holders of non-immigrant visas and lawful permanent residents or others on a path to U.S. citizenship, for exercising their First Amendment rights. The letter outlines four key principles universities should adhere to when addressing campus speech:
- Colleges and universities should encourage robust discussion and exploration of ideas by students, faculty, and staff, regardless of their nationality or immigration status.
- Nothing obligates universities to act as deputies in immigration law enforcement — to the contrary, universities do not and should not veer so far from their core mission for good reasons.
- Schools must protect the privacy of all students, including immigrant and international students.
- Schools must abide by the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“The federal government cannot mandate expulsion of students or threaten funding cuts to punish constitutionally protected speech on campus,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “While the administration can enforce Title VI to ensure a learning environment free from harassment, it cannot force universities into adopting restrictive speech codes that silence the viewpoints the government disfavors.”
This is the fourth set of guidance from the ACLU to universities since 2023. Dozens of ACLU affiliates have taken legal action, conducted know your rights trainings, or issued additional guidance related to protest on campuses.
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This story was originally published by ProPublica
By Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, ProPublica
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Photo: Malnutrition, cc via Bing
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