Congressman Josh Hawley Hearing – Your Data, Their Profit
I’d like to welcome everyone to this here today entitled Your Data, Their Profit: The Consumer Cost of AI Surveillance Pricing. This is a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, which I am delighted to chair and to work with my colleague, the ranking member, Senator Durbin. I want to thank especially all of our witnesses for being here, as well as everybody else who is in the room and those who are joining us online.
The Media AI Boom Transferring the Economy Propaganda
You know, hardly a day goes by in this town without some booster of AI talking about how it’s going to transform the American economy for the better. The question is, whose betterment will this transformation lead to?
I noticed that one of the nation’s largest newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, has a headline today saying that the AI boom is transforming the American economy beyond recognition. The question is, are the American people going to be left behind in this transformation?
We’re here today to talk about one of the effects of this AI boom, the partnership between the AI industry and some of the biggest corporations in America to effectively scam consumers out of every last dollar they have in order to buy products that they need and rely on.
Examples of AI Surveillance Pricing Scams and How it Used by Companies
What if I told you that a store like Staples, for example, charged more online based on your IP address or on your proximity to arrive. What if I told you that targets shopping app track your location real-time in order to charge you as much as a hundred and fifty dollars more for a vacuum the moment that you enter their store. What if I told you that lift has charged 55 separate riders in my home state of Missouri 29 different prices for the same exact route at the same exact time with a difference of 37 dollars between the different fares. These are all documented scam cases, documented cases of what we are now calling AI Surveillance Pricing Scam.
Corporations Working With AI Companies Buying Your Data
That is really in a nutshell when the corporations work with the AI companies to harvest your personal data, and I’m talking about your home address, how many children you have, your internet browsing history, everything they can get their hands on and feed your data through their complicated algorithms, which of course are totally opaque and unavailable to you, in order to force you to pay the absolute maximum amount of money they can get out of your pocket for every single product that they can offer to you.
This is One of the Biggest Scams and Spying in American History
This marriage between the AI industry and these mega corporations. They’re trying to pull off this scam against every American consumer. AI Surveillance Pricing is the unholy trinity of everything Americans hate. Spying on people, Scamming them, and taking away jobs. Let me just talk about each of those briefly in term.
AI Companies Spying on People – Kroger
Did you know that your neighborhood grocery store is amassing your data and tracking your purchases all for their profit? For example, take Kroger. Kroger is not just a grocery store, though it is certainly that, one of the largest. It is a data-selling mega-corporation. Kroger’s loyalty program has a treasure trove of your data if you’re one of their customers. One Kroger customer got a copy of his shopping profile recently. You want to guess how long it was? 62 pages. 62 pages of personalized data on this one person based on his shopping history. Last year, Kroger earned over $500 million from selling, yes, selling the data that it harvests from its loyal customers and giving it to other corporations. You know, that accounts for 33% of its net income last year, a third of its income. came from selling the personal data of its own customers. Let me just say that again. Kroger made half a billion dollars by tracking its customers in store and online and then selling that to other people.
AI Companies Scamming People – Delta Airlines
You know, AI weaponizes your data against you for profit. I’ll give you an example. On Delta’s second quarter 2025 earnings call, Delta’s former president, Glenn Hounstein, revealed its partnership, Delta’s that is, with an outfit called Fetcher, which is a company that specializes in AI Surveillance Pricing. Now, after that earnings call, Bloomberg uncovered a Fetcher white paper that describes using AI with airlines to replace simple flat fares with a complicated AI surveillance pricing scam that will vary the fare based on what they believe individual customers are willing to pay. Fetcher went on this company to say that it’s time for the airlines to enter an exploitation phase of AI technology. Think about that. These companies are salivating at the prospect of using AI technology and your personal data to exploit you, and they’re not even pretending otherwise.
AI Companies Taking Away Jobs
You know, this practice of AI surveillance pricing scam is making its way to brick and mortar stores. It’s not just online. Here’s an example of that. Kroger and Walmart and other companies are rapidly introducing digital shelf labels all across their stores. We’ll give you an example over my shoulder here of a picture. Here’s a digital shelf label. These are appearing everywhere across the United States. These labels can be used because they can be changed instantaneously. They can be used to implement AI Surveillance Pricing in the store, not just online.
The Goal of Corporations and AI Companies – “Personalized Pricing”
Delta’s former president, I mentioned a moment ago, really put it best when he said that the goal is the goal of the industry. The goal of all of these industries, these mega corporations and the AI industry that’s working with them, the goal is to charge what they call personalized prices, as if it’s a benefit to you. Personalized prices. Here’s what he said. “This is a full reengineering of how we price and how we will be pricing in the future. We will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual.” Let me just translate. In other words, they’re going to figure out how they can scam you one person at a time. They’re not going to charge you the same fare they charge your neighbor. They’re not going to charge you the same fare as the guy sitting next to you in the seat. They’re going to figure out how they can build you out of every dime they’re willing to pay every time you step on an airline. It’s not just going to be them. It’s going to be the grocery stores and everybody else until we figure out how to bring transparency, how to bring honesty and some protections to the American consumer. That’s what we’re here today to talk about.
Anti-Price Gouging Laws vs AI Surveillance Pricing
With that, I turn to Senator Durbin. …Missouri and we quite robustly enforce those anti-price gouging laws and a good example of this is that after a major storm or natural disaster, which we have on a fairly regular basis in my state, state law prohibits retailers from jacking up prices. Now I have to tell you, this AI surveillance pricing sounds a lot to me like price gouging, where you’ve got information about a consumer who may be in a position of vulnerability. I mean, let’s look again at the JetBlue poster and just think about this particular individual who is flying for a funeral, and JetBlue, using their information asymmetry, knows that, and so therefore turns the price up by 230 bucks in a day. Why isn’t that just price gouging? Otherwise, why isn’t this AI surveillance pricing just personalized pricing, call it what you like. Why isn’t that just a more sophisticated form of price gouging, where you’re really exploiting people and their vulnerabilities?
