Oakland Privacy

by Samuel Leitch

In 2022, a time when rents continued to soar impossibly, the company RealPage boasted that it could help landlords increase profits even further.¹ How was this possible? By pooling nonpublic pricing data from clients, RealPage’s software can offer landlords recommendations on the highest possible rent that they can set for a given residential unit. Although it would be illegal for these landlords to communicate directly to agree upon rent prices, critics of RealPage claim that this software simply acts as an algorithmic middleman for price setting. RealPage is no small player, either: Greystar, the largest apartment manager in the United States, will have to pay $7 million to nine different states for its use of RealPage’s software.²

This scenario is an example of algorithmic price fixing, where through the use of software, competitors may coordinate outcomes that would otherwise be illegal under antitrust law.

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by Samuel Leitch

Do rideshare companies charge you more if your phone is about to die? The trending Internet rumor, based in part on a fabricated screenshot posted to Reddit, is ultimately unproven.¹ However, it serves as an example of a real-world practice called surveillance pricing, which companies use every day in the era of big data.

In a recent study, the FTC found that “details like a person’s precise location or browser history can be frequently used to target individual consumers with different prices for the same goods and services.”² Data collected from browser cookies, data brokers, and other sources can determine how much more willing you are to purchase a given product or service—and, consequently, how much more you might be charged.

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by Don Marti and Robert Tauler

While other states debate private right of action in privacy laws, California already has one, and it’s working for us. Since it was enacted the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) has included an individual’s right to bring a civil suit when someone surreptitiously tracks them, allowing for more robust privacy enforcement than any other state.

CIPA was ahead of its time, but some special interests want to weaken it. California Senate Bill 690, which passed the state Senate in June, would eliminate some of CIPA’s protections entirely if the surveillance was done for a “business purpose.” Unfortunately, a lot of Big Tech and data broker misinformation has come along with the bill, so we are taking the opportunity to clear the air.

Below are the fictions being advanced by Big Tech’s lobbying efforts, which we clarify with the facts.

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