Tag Archives: US Federal Trade Commission

The Road to Success is Paved with Dirty Secrets

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Amazon.com is the latest to face possible sanctions over allegations it improperly withheld tens of thousands of business records—including some unflattering to founder Jeff Bezos—in defending against an action by the Federal Trade Commission. At Google, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled the company didn’t properly save evidence in a case brought by Epic Games, and its behavior has become a yoke as the Justice Department seeks to break up the search giant after winning two landmark antitrust cases. A different federal judge recently referred the behavior of Apple to the Justice Department, in part because of alleged efforts to hide documents from legal scrutiny…

Each company is accused of being overly aggressive in holding back internal documents under special legal standing—known as privilege—that should have, in fact, been turned over to the government or lawyers…Maybe it isn’t surprising the companies can’t help themselves in pushing the limits. It is, after all, what has made them so successful as disrupters turned conquerors. In their minds, they are the underdogs, whether they are facing the rise of AI, China or the next Big Thing lurking beyond the horizon. 

Excerpt from Tim Higgins, What Is Big Tech Trying to Hide?, WSJ, May 17, 2025

How to Categorize Individuals: Surveillance Pricing

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The United States Federal Trade Commission issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers’ characteristics and behavior. The orders seek information about the potential impact these practices have on privacy, competition, and consumer protection.

The orders are aimed at helping the FTC better understand the opaque market for products by third-party intermediaries that claim to use advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence and other technologies, along with personal information about consumers—such as their location, demographics, credit history, and browsing or shopping history—to categorize individuals and set a targeted price for a product or service. The study is aimed at helping the FTC better understand how surveillance pricing is affecting consumers, especially when the pricing is based on surveillance of an individual’s personal characteristics and behavior.

“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”

The FTC is using its 6(b) authority, which authorizes the Commission to conduct wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose, to obtain information from eight firms that advertise their use of AI and other technologies along with historical and real-time customer information to target prices for individual consumers. The orders were sent to: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.

FTC Issues Orders to Eight Companies Seeking Information on Surveillance Pricing, Press Release, July 23, 2024