Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a figure often mired in controversy, has taken an unexpected action that aligns with consumer privacy interests. He has filed lawsuits against five major television manufacturers: Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL. The suits allege these companies secretly embedded spyware in their smart TVs to monitor and record viewer habits without proper consent. The technology at the heart of the case is called Automated Content Recognition, or ACR. Functioning like a Shazam app for video, ACR works by taking constant audio and video fingerprints of what is playing on the screen. It matches these fingerprints against a database to identify the specific shows, movies, games, and apps being used. This data is then transmitted back to the companies. The primary use of this harvested data is for hyper-targeted advertising. An LG Ad Solutions website, for example, touts how ACR allows advertisers to target viewers based on the exact content they watch, including specific shows, networks, and genres. Because ACR monitors everything on the screen, it can also identify a user’s subscription services, purchase history, and gaming habits. The data can be combined with location information, narrowing targeting down to a user’s city or zip code. According to the Texas lawsuit, the software is aggressively intrusive. It can capture screenshots of the television display every 500 milliseconds, enabling real-time surveillance of viewing activity. The legal filing against LG claims that television software often deceptively guides users to activate ACR during setup. Any explanation of what ACR does is typically buried in dense terms-of-service documents filled with legal jargon that few consumers read or fully understand. While most TVs offer a setting to disable ACR, the lawsuits argue that the process is designed to be opaque and confusing, leading many consumers to unknowingly leave the invasive tracking enabled. In his announcement, Paxton placed particular emphasis on the Chinese origins of two defendants, Hisense and TCL. The press release stated that these Chinese ties raise serious concerns about consumer data harvesting, exacerbated by China’s National Security Law. That law, the statement notes, grants the Chinese government the capability to access data collected by companies within its jurisdiction, potentially putting U.S. consumer information at risk. This legal action represents a rare point of alignment between the Texas Attorney General’s office and consumer privacy advocates. The case highlights the pervasive and often hidden data collection practices built into modern connected devices, turning everyday appliances into sophisticated surveillance tools for corporate advertising and, potentially, state actors. The outcome of these lawsuits could set a significant precedent for transparency and user consent in the Internet of Things era.
