Just a year ago, the Prospect published a special issue that introduced the term surveillance pricing, which refers to the emerging practice of companies using Americans’ personal information to set individualized prices, exploiting the desire to buy a particular good. If a business knows when you deposited your paycheck, they might hike up prices on you to capitalize on the money jingling in your pocket; if Uber knows your phone battery is low, they might charge more for a ride because you have to get home before your phone dies.
Within a month, the Federal Trade Commission had initiated a study of surveillance pricing; within a few more months, lawmakers in several states had introduced legislation to ban the practice. And today, the first federal surveillance pricing ban has been introduced, with an added measure that would ban the use of surveillance in setting wages.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is introducing the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act of 2025. It would simply outlaw using automated processes to offer customized prices based on surveillance data. Differences based on “reasonable” costs for a particular region would be allowed, as well as discounts for broadly defined groups like seniors or veterans or members of a loyalty program. But using personal data to target individual prices would be prohibited.
“We already know that our data is being sucked up, but people always ask what corporations are doing with all that data,” Casar said in an interview. “This is the clear place that they’re going to go … price-gouging and wage-fixing through surveillance is already prevalent in the economy, and if we don’t ban it soon, it could be a wildfire that spreads.”
The bill release comes as Delta Air Lines announced on a recent earnings call that it would be using artificial intelligence to price 20 percent of its airfares by the end of this year, employing an Israeli pricing company called Fetcherr to determine passenger “pain points.” That could be accomplished by Delta and Fetcherr discovering that a passenger needs to be in another city for a conference or a business engagement, or even the funeral of a family member.
Innovations in airline pricing, which is already broadly segmented between business and leisure travel and tied to the timing of purchases, don’t typically stay there. “The most pernicious pricing technologies come out of airlines and export to the rest of the economy,” said Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collaborative. (Groundwork was our partner on the Prospect’s special pricing issue that brought surveillance pricing to the public consciousness.) This market leadership from airlines has been true for tactics like junk fees, surge pricing, and algorithmic price-fixing.
It was important to Casar that action on surveillance wage-setting be included in the bill. Uber has been accused of determining wage rates in real time by pitting its drivers against one another to take rides at the lowest possible rate. “Reverse auctions” where nurses bid on shifts follow this same strategy. The Casar bill would ban the use of data to inform that pricing for labor, outside of basic regional data regarding the location of workers and the cost of living in that area.
“Our role in Congress and government should be protecting you as a consumer and as a worker,” Casar said. “If Uber knows where their drivers are at any minute, and they see one of them go into a pawnshop and then offer them lower wages … we have to look at corporate behavior in this area.”
The Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act would give enforcement to the FTC. States would be able to use the federal law to enforce surveillance pricing and wage-setting in their jurisdictions, and private litigation would also be allowed. Importantly, the bill prevents arbitration clauses in consumer or employment contracts from being used to block enforcement of surveillance pricing and wage-setting. The bill imagines a federal floor, so states could go further in stopping surveillance data from being used to set prices or wages.
“It goes to that question of what is fundamentally fair in the economy,” said Becca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner of the FTC, who voted to begin the surveillance pricing inquiry that led to a preliminary report in January. “Why do you get a different price than I do, just if I browsed a different website?” (Slaughter was illegally fired by Donald Trump this spring. A district court in D.C. found the firing illegal and reinstated her, but the administration got an emergency temporary stay of that reinstatement this week, so her commissioner seat is in limbo.)
That sense of unfairness about the opacity of the consumer experience leading to personalized price discrimination could make the legislation potent. Owens shared Groundwork Collaborative polling data revealing that people oppose being charged different prices for the same item by 80-20. She noted that Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Warner (D-VA) demanded that Delta explain their instituting of AI-led surveillance pricing, showing how the issue resonates across the ideological spectrum of the Democratic caucus.
“I think there could be a bipartisan Senate bill,” Owens said. “It’s this intersection of two things Americans care a lot about; one is privacy and civil liberties and the other is the economy.”
Casar is challenging his colleagues to support the effort to deal with these practices before they become prevalent, noting that “Republicans talk a big game about Big Tech and populism and holding companies accountable.” But even if Congress fails to act, the FTC has the authority to take up crackdowns on surveillance pricing, as an unfair or deceptive act and practice or as an unfair method of competition.
“FTC language is broad for a reason,” Slaughter said. “Congress wanted us to adapt to changes in the marketplace. This is a place where the data and people’s gut feelings tend to line up.”
The early interest in stopping surveillance pricing reflects the outrage people have about their data being used in this fashion. “Some people are talking about finding a customer’s ‘willingness to pay,’ that’s the industry term,” Casar said. “This is not about willingness to pay, this is about finding a customer’s level of desperation and taking advantage of it.”