Who We Are
We're handed the brief: partner with a real advocacy organization, produce something that would actually be used. No dry research papers.
Most of us had never heard of surveillance pricing. By the end of that first week, we couldn't stop noticing it everywhere.
The Problem
Companies tag shoppers — "impulsive buyer," "recently divorced," "first-time car buyer" — and let algorithms set prices millions of times per day with no disclosure.
| Location | How close you are to the store |
| Browsing History | What you've been researching online |
| Device Type | iPhone vs. cheap Android = different price |
| Inferred Income | Estimated from neighborhood data |
| Behavior Tags | "Impulsive buyer," "recently divorced" |
| Purchase History | What you've paid before & your patterns |
We meet Vinhcent Le — VP of AI Policy at TechEquity and former board member of the California Privacy Protection Agency. He lays out the landscape: 250+ retailers using these tools, multi-million dollar settlements already on the books, and a new bill — AB 2564 — working its way through the legislature.
"What we need is something a staffer can read in two minutes during a busy hearing week."
Our Partner
TechEquity Action is the advocacy arm of the TechEquity Collaborative — a California-based organization working at the intersection of technology, housing, labor, and consumer rights. Co-sponsor of AB 2564 alongside Consumer Reports.
2016 in Oakland, California. Backed by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation.
Ensure the tech industry is a force for justice — working at the intersection of technology, housing, labor, and consumer rights.
Co-sponsor alongside Consumer Reports. Submitted formal testimony to the California Assembly Privacy Committee.
AB 2564 will ban surveillance pricing — the practice of using personal data collected through electronic surveillance technology to charge different consumers different prices for the same product. The bill prohibits retailers from using personally identifiable information (PII) such as age, gender, marital status, geolocation, or online search history to adjust a consumer's price based on their perceived willingness to pay. The bill also protects transparently offered discounts to guard against invasive and unfair profiling.
AB 2564 Will
Prohibit retailers from using surveillance-collected personal data to set customized prices for individual consumers or specific groups.
Clear enforcement mechanisms, including civil penalties and injunctive relief for harmed individuals.
Consumer-friendly discounts and loyalty programs are protected through reasonable, clearly defined exemptions.
Industry Arguments — and the Answers
Three weeks in FTC reports, NBER economic studies, Consumer Reports' Instacart investigation, and California court records. We map every argument industry lobbyists make and find the evidence that counters each one.
The Instacart finding hits hardest: 74% of items tested had multiple price points at the same store, same time. A family of four could pay up to $1,200 more per year without ever knowing why.
Back-and-forth with Vinhcent and the team. Our first drafts are too long, too academic, too timid. Every sentence needs to either name the harm, cite the proof, or arm the reader. Nothing else earns its place.
We go through four full drafts. The rebuttal section turns out to be the most valuable piece.
What Did We Do?
Legislators and their staff manage dozens of bills at once. A well-crafted one-pager is often the only document that gets read cover-to-cover. Ours is designed to be fully understood in under two minutes.
TechEquity's policy team stress-tests every claim. Could a lobbyist pick it apart? We tighten every stat, double-check every source, make sure every sentence would survive a committee hearing.
TechEquity Action delivers the one-pager to legislative staff and committee members during the AB 2564 hearings. Consumer Reports co-sponsors and submits formal testimony to the California Assembly Privacy Committee.
A document that started in a classroom is now in a briefing binder on a legislator's desk in Sacramento.
The bill is moving. We built this site to go wider — to explain surveillance pricing to anyone who shops online, and to make it as easy as possible to contact a legislator and say: vote YES on AB 2564.
Most people don't know this is happening to them. That's the problem we're solving now.