In 1928, Kroger bought a small Pittsburgh grocery chain called Eagle Grocery. Three years later, its founders were back in business under a new name: Giant Eagle. For nearly a century since, Giant Eagle has remained one of the few regional chains Kroger hasn’t swallowed.

This July, Kroger announced it would try again.

At $1.65 billion, the acquisition is small by Kroger’s standards. This is exactly why it deserves scrutiny. Kroger has made dozens of acquisitions, many of them too modest on their own to draw much attention. But a closer look at this deal, combined with knowledge of Kroger’s overall acquisition pattern, reveals what is at stake.

In Columbus, Ohio, Kroger already controls 43 percent of the grocery market. In three instances, Giant Eagle and Kroger sit directly across the street from one another. If this deal goes ahead, it would turn head-to-head competitors into a single company, controlling nearly 50 percent of the market.

Grocery mergers have long meant higher prices, fewer choices, and lower wages. Kroger’s mergers now mean something more: a bigger file on everyone who walks through the door. Kroger isn’t buying stores. It is buying data. Kroger’s privacy policy, updated in September, discloses that the company collects facial recognition data from shoppers entering select stores and that its cameras capture license plates. The Columbus Dispatch reported this summer that private Flock cameras at Kroger share footage with local police.

Buying bleach or yogurt now comes with the prospect of being scanned, tracked, and profiled. With every store Kroger buys, the data and surveillance apparatus grows, and Americans become more and more accustomed to an increasingly inhumane and demoralizing shopping experience.

This brief examines what the merger would mean for prices, for workers, and for the civil and economic liberties of anyone who buys groceries.