Texas Sues Top TV Makers For 'Secretly Recording' What You Watch

A data-harvesting technique in today’s smart TVs has sparked Texas to sue the top display makers, accusing them of spying on consumers by routinely capturing screenshots.

“This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says. “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.”

Paxton is suing LG, Samsung, and Sony, as well as Chinese companies TCL and Hisense, claiming they’ve been “unlawfully collecting personal data [by] secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes.”

The companies leverage a lesser-known technology called Automated Content Recognition (ACR), which is built in to the TVs. ACR has been around for years, and has attracted scrutiny before, because it’s a way for manufacturers to collect data about your TV usage and serve up targeted ads. “ACR in its simplest terms is an uninvited, invisible digital invader,” Paxton argues.

How an ACR system works. (Credit: ACR study)

In 2017, Vizio was fined $2.2 million for using ACR without consumer consent. The ACR usage continues today and can be tucked away in a TV’s privacy policy or settings, which Paxton is now criticizing as duplicitous.

“Disclosures are hidden, vague, and misleading. The company collects far more data than necessary to make the TV work,” his lawsuit against the TV makers argues. “Consumers are stripped of real choice and kept in the dark about what’s happening in their own homes.”

ACR on Samsung TV

The ACR disclosure on a Samsung TV. (Credit: PCMag)

The TVs from the top manufacturers are actually “mass surveillance systems,” Paxton alleges, since the ACR systems can capture TV screens and other kinds of data on the display. Last year, a study on ACR implementations also found evidence that LG and Samsung TVs routinely send ACR data to company servers.

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Still, we expect TV makers to push back against Paxton’s lawsuit. That’s because ACR systems don’t usually relay screenshots or video footage. Paxton’s lawsuit even indicates the screenshots are scanned to create a “fingerprint” of the content, which is then shared with the TV makers’ servers to automatically help determine what’s being watched.

The fingerprint approach can also preserve some user privacy. Nevertheless, Paxton alleges the TV makers are amassing a “detailed log of a household’s media consumption from what content was watched, when, and for how long, across all inputs and apps.”

We’ve reached out to the affected TV makers and will update the story if we hear back. But if you’re concerned, you can opt out of ACR collection by checking your TV’s privacy settings.