Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed suit against five major television companies for spying on Texans by secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes. The five major corporations being sued are as follows: Sony, Samsung, LG, as well as Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation (“TCL”), which are both based in China.

These companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology. ACR in its simplest terms is an uninvited, invisible digital invader. This software 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.