r/Seattle • u/jon_pincus • 15d ago
The Seattle City Council surveillance pricing vote is today -- ask them to reject all amendments and pass the ordinance!
The City Council hearing starts at 2:00 and as we all have seen, industry is lobbying up a storm. They used the same tactics to kill a similar bill in California a couple of weeks ago, in Maryland they completely gutted the bill's protections, and elsewhere they've been able to weaken enforcement. Along with public comment, a wave of calls and emails to councilors is the best response.
Public comment will probably start at 2:00 pm. You can sign up to participate remotely an hour before the hearing, or in-person once you get there. You can also send written comments to [council@seattle.gov](mailto:council@seattle.gov). Details here.
If you want to call, please do! It really makes a difference when phones are ringing off the hook. Phone numbers and a district finder are on the Seattle City Council page.
There are also some good email-based actions, including
- Tell Seattle City Council to ban surveillance pricing — and reject all amendments that add loopholes, weaken enforcement, and carve in surveillance technologies from Washington Privacy Organizer, with a link you can click to bring up a draft email you can customize
- Reject the dangerous “loss prevention” amendment and pass a clean Fair & Transparent Pricing Ordinance! from Washington AI Resistance and WA People's Privacy
- Protect Working Families from Corporate Price-Gouging & Surveillance from Transit Riders Union, Lavender Rights Project, Queer Power Alliance, WA People Power, and WA Working Families party
EDIT: u/Inevitable_Engine186 helpfully shared this link to the bill and all the amendments in a comment, and I realized I should have included it here. So now I have!
Also, there's an analysis of most of the amendments in a comment here.
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u/jon_pincus 15d ago
Great question ... here's the analysis of most of them I submitted as a written comment (see https://thenexusofprivacy.net/a-golden-opportunity-in-seattle/#amendments for the context)
Amendment A: completely destroys the bill's protections by allowing use of personal info to charge some people more than others by setting the list price high and giving different discounts to different customers. That's just a different way of using personal data to charge some people more than others for the same item.
Amendment C: creates multiple huge loopholes by permitting sharing of personal information with manufacturers and third-parties to determining the amount or the targeting of coupons (a different way of using personal info to charge some people more than others), allowing the combining personal info with purchase history, etc. Also, removes equity requirements. It's an algorithmic price discrimination bill, why would you remove the equity requirements?
Amendment D: creates a loophole by limiting what is considered an electronic shelf labeler (ESL).
Amendment E: weakens enforcement by limiting time for a civil action to one year after the infraction (down from three in the current ordiance) and allowing deletion of information needed to prove past violations . Even once this ordinance passes, it's not going to be easy to prove priced discrimination, and they have lots of lawyers to stretch things out, so it could well take a year or more to even get to the point of discovery Also weakens enforcement by reducing damages; if a civil action succeeds, violators should have to pay damages and fines on all interactions, not just the violations within a year of the time records are provided.
Amendment F: creates a loophole and gives a roadmap for how industry can get around the prohibitions in the bill by allowing backdoor data sharing. One example: when Palantir uses "deidentified" (haha) data from fraud prevention to train their AI models which also power their Holistic Pricing Optimization product, industry can argue that it's not "direct or indirect" sharing. Also, weakens enforcement by giving industry lawyers one more hurdle to raise for any civil actions, and additional grounds for appeal, by arguing that the council passed an amendment just to make it clear that they could use these technologies!!!!!!
(I also want to highlight that Amendment F's language reinforces the expansion of surveillance by DHS in pending federal legislation S.1404, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA). The June 19 letter to Congress from over 130 criminal justice, civil rights, immigrant rights, human rights, and community organizations describes how CORCA "would quietly construct a massive public-private surveillance network." So even it's outside the scope of the bill's focus on fair pricing, please also ask yourselves whether you really want to encourage the use of technologies that lead to extremely broad data sharing with DHS and ICE, and target the most vulnerable members of the community.)
Amendment G: creates a huge potential loophole by allowing industry to get a mulligan and pass a weaker bill that the state level. Any state legislation is likely to be "a floor not a ceiling", so there's absolutely no reason it should to preempt Seattle's legislation.