Esther Ciammichilli, Jackson Sinnenberg, WAMU; Maryland passes legislation banning retailers from using personal data to set prices. Does it do enough?
"The Maryland General Assembly passed a bill this week will prohibit food retailers from changing the price of their products – in real time – depending on who is buying them. The practice is called dynamic pricing.
The new legislation is expected to be signed into law by Governor Wes Moore, who introduced it with leaders in the General Assembly. It will specifically prohibit retailers from using personal protected data to set prices for individual customers. This kind of data includes biometric information like ethnicity, sex, and gender identity...
What made Governor Wes Moore and the assembly leadership want to tackle dynamic pricing during this session?
Well, I think we’ve seen over the last several years this sort of catch up that we’re doing. Technology is moving so fast and the tech companies are finding more and more ways to exploit, really, the data, the algorithms, what they know about us in ways that are really harmful to consumers.
Over the last few years we’ve had several bills that are about protecting biodynamics, protecting consumer privacy, protecting the use of data without people’s permission. I think over the last year we saw a new way that these tech companies and these large corporations are finding ways to combine data brokers, private personal data, in a way that’s really harmful to consumers, in a way that really exploits consumers. And so this year, this is what we tackled.
During the final debate over the bill last week, you said, “One of the largest corporations in the world is announcing to their shareholders technology which they will patent to be able to adjust prices based on personal data.” Can you elaborate on the details of that announcement?
Yeah, so, you know, Walmart is … they’re not going to have paper tags on their grocery stores anymore on there for for their prices. They’re gonna have these little screens that can change immediately. Digital screens to price your milk and your eggs and flour and and whatever else.
But what this technology allows them to do ultimately is to figure out who’s standing in front of that screen and change the price based on who you are. And that’s really the thing that we’re trying to get ahead of with this legislation."
