"Surveillance pricing" is when a store shows you a different price than it shows someone else for the same item, based on what it knows about you — your location, your browsing, your past purchases. Not a sale, not a coupon. A price set for you, personally, from your data. Two states moved against it this month.
New Jersey acts first
New Jersey's legislature passed the Fair Price Protection Act, a bipartisan bill now on Governor Mikie Sherrill's desk. It bars grocery stores and third-party delivery platforms from using AI and consumer surveillance data to vary the price of the same item between shoppers. It also puts a one-year moratorium on new electronic shelf labels — the digital price tags that can change a price in real time — while the New Jersey Innovation Authority studies them.
It is the first state to freeze electronic shelf labels and target grocery surveillance pricing specifically, and the third to curb surveillance pricing overall, after Maryland and Connecticut.
California is next
California's AB 2564, by Assemblymember Chris Ward, would ban surveillance pricing statewide, not just for groceries: any "customized price... based, in whole or in part, on personally identifiable information collected through electronic surveillance." It has advanced through the Assembly and is now in the Senate. The EFF, EPIC, and Consumer Reports back it.
The documented examples are not hypothetical. Princeton Review charged more in certain zip codes, where Asian customers were twice as likely to see the higher price. Orbitz showed Mac users pricier hotels. Staples charged more to shoppers living farther from a competitor.
The same data, aimed at ads
Pricing is one use of the trail; advertising is another. Papa John's partnered with NBCUniversal, Instacart, and the agency Carat to watch grocery purchases — eggs, milk, meat, produce — and predict when a household is running low, then serve "Light on groceries?" ads on NBCU streaming. Security researcher Bruce Schneier notes the design goal is knowing what is in your fridge "without being too creepy." The data that prices you is the data that targets you.
What you can do
You can't opt out of surveillance pricing directly, but you can starve it. Shop signed out and clear cookies, or use a private browser like Brave. Compare prices from a different device or network. And if you're in New Jersey or California, your legislators are the lever that actually moves this.
Up next · Wednesday
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