SB 6312 (Surveillance Pricing) testimony

SB 6312 is a "companion bill" to HB 2841. Sen. Saldaña introduced it Monday, January 26, and the next thing I knew there was a hearing scheduled for Wednesday at 8 am. There had been a lot of pushback on the in the House hearing on the moratorium on electronic shelf labelers, so it seemed like this was a good area for me to focus on. I wound up as one of the early speakers, after Maya Morales of WA People's Privacy and two grocery workers – all of whom were great. 60 seconds isn't a lot of time, but enough to hit the key points. And it turned out I made a good choice: my testimony undercut spin from Chamber of Progress (whose tag line is "Technology's Progressive Future" hahahaha), lobbyists from trade associations, and the lobbyist from VusionGroup (a large ESL manufacturer).

I live-skeeted the hearing here.

Chair Kauffman, Ranking Member Dozier, Members of the committee,

I'm Jon Pincus of Bellevue. I run the Nexus of Privacy newsletter, and served on the state Automated Decision Systems Workgroup in 2022. I am PRO on SB 6312. Maximizing profits by charging some people more than others is unfair and should be prohibited, My testimony today focuses on the moratorium on ESLs, electronic shelf labelers.

VusionGroup's web site describes ESL's as a way to "maximize your margins as opportunities arise". Their ESL's work seamlessly with technologies like sensors and cameras that "feed relevant information to machine learning algorithms". By leveraging NFC technology they enable "personalized coupons."

I like coupons as much as the next guy, But "personalized coupons" are just another way of charging different people different prices for the same product: set a high base price, and use different discounts to charge some people more than others.

The systems are black boxes, with no transparency. A moratorium is necessary, before they are widely deployed.