Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL Technology Group Corporation, alleging the companies have spied on Americans in their own homes. Two of the companies, Hisense and TCL, are Chinese entities and may threaten the security of American users.
According to Paxton’s office, the companies employ Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology, which “can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent.”
In his lawsuit against Sony, Paxton wrote that consumers “never agreed to Sony ‘Watchware.'” Similar comments were issued across the other four lawsuits. The filings state that the brands “secretly monitors what consumers watch across streaming apps, cable, and even connected devices like gaming consoles or Blu-ray players. This isn’t a glitch or side effect—it’s deliberate.” The companies “[harvest] this data, [build] profiles of consumers’ behavior, and [sell] it for profit.”
“ACR data collection, when combined with identifiers, metadata, and network information, becomes a powerful tool for profiling, targeting, and behavioral tracking, often without informed consent,” the lawsuits note.
Paxton asserts in the filings that the “mass surveillance of consumers violates Texas law.”
“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” he said in a statement. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”
