Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton recently sued Sony, Samsung, LG, as well as Hisense and Technology Group Corporation ("TCL"), the latter two based in China.
Paxton said Chinese ties pose serious concerns about consumer data harvesting and are worsened by a law in China, which gives its government the capability to get consumer data.
The AG's office also said the technology puts users' privacy and sensitive information, such as passwords, bank information, and other personal information at risk.
Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation spoke with AFN.
"So, what we're beginning to find out more and more is that Chinese consumer devices will often have on the device something that's not on the schematic, something that's not mentioned at all in the product description. And that's a device that will send information, personal identifying information back to China. Things like your conversations, your use of the Internet, that with the advent of artificial intelligence can be molded into quite an amazing intelligence product for the Chinese Communist Party."
It's not a harmless addition for American consumers who may think they don’t say or do anything the Chinese would find valuable. DeVore said the CCP could use your information for blackmail or bribery.
Many of these products could be dangerous to far more than one buyer’s household.
"This doesn't even go into the fact that a lot of Chinese products, especially those that connect into our electrical grid or any types of infrastructure, we're finding that more and more all of them have kill switches. So that could enable in an emergency in a wartime environment or gray zone warfare tactics for China to purposefully damage key parts of our electrical grid."
Devore said that financial penalties must be exerted on businesses selling products in America that are not forthcoming about their devices. He said Americans want safe products with full transparency and for companies to tell them how to turn off any "listening" components.
