Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday sued Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, +0.71% GOOG, +0.60% Google, claiming it collected biometric data for millions of Texans without obtaining proper consent. “For more than a decade, Texas has prohibited companies from capturing Texans’ biometric data – including the unique characteristics of an individual’s face and voice – without their informed, advance consent. In blatant defiance of that law, Google has, since at least 2015, collected biometric data from innumerable Texans and used their faces and their voices to serve Google’s commercial ends,” the lawsuit charges. “Indeed, all across the state, everyday Texans have become unwitting cash cows being milked by Google for profits.” A Google spokesperson, in a statement, said: “AG Paxton is once again mischaracterizing our products in another breathless lawsuit. For example, Google Photos helps you organize pictures of people, by grouping similar faces, so you can easily find old photos. Of course, this is only visible to you and you can easily turn off this feature if you choose and we do not use photos or videos in Google Photos for advertising purposes. The same is true for Voice Match and Face Match on Nest Hub Max, which are off-by-default features that give users the option to let Google Assistant recognize their voice or face to show their information. We will set the record straight in court.”
