Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed separate lawsuits on Tuesday against five major TV manufacturers—Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL—accusing them of “secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes.”
The lawsuits claim these TVs form a “mass surveillance system” that employs Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology to collect personal data for targeted advertising. ACR analyzes visual and audio data to identify content from streaming services, cable TV, YouTube videos, Blu-ray discs, and other sources.
Paxton alleges ACR also captures streams from security and doorbell cameras, media transmitted via Apple AirPlay or Google Cast, and displays from devices connected to the TV’s HDMI ports, such as laptops and game consoles.
The suits accuse the companies of “deceptively” prompting users to activate ACR, with disclosures that are “hidden, vague, and misleading.” Specifically, Samsung and Hisense capture screenshots of the TV display every 500 milliseconds, according to the complaints.
Manufacturers allegedly send this viewing data back to their own servers “without the user’s knowledge or consent,” enabling them to sell it for targeted advertising.
Paxton raises additional concerns about TCL and Hisense, both based in China, describing their TVs as “Chinese-sponsored surveillance devices, recording the viewing habits of Texans at every turn.”
The lawsuits charge that Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL violate Texas state laws.
