New NDP Leader Avi Lewis has set his sights on bringing an end to the practice of surveillance pricing, calling it a “crystal clear example of why we desperately need government guardrails to protect us from the triple threat of Big Tech, AI and corporate monopolies that dominate every sector of our economy.” During a press conference in Ottawa flanked by his MPs, Lewis called on the Carney government to enact a ban “before it becomes a predatory new normal in Canadian life.” 

Surveillance pricing is when a company uses personal data — geolocation, device type, browsing history, social media activity — to create an individualized price for someone, with the aim of determining the maximum amount a person is willing to pay for something based on their individual circumstances. The objective of surveillance pricing isn’t necessarily to individualize prices for people, but to extract the most amount of money a person is willing to pay. 

If that seems invasive, it’s because it is. Surveillance pricing is predicated on the ability to take all sorts of your personal data that you did not openly consent to being used against you to get the maximum price for a company charging you for a good or service. 

If, for example, a retailer knows you’re looking at an item from within the parking lot, then they can charge you more for it using the logic that if you’ve already travelled all the way to the store and are looking up the item in the parking lot, so chances are you’d be willing to pay more for an item compared to someone who still needs to actually make their way to the........

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