Texas Attorney General Sues Google For Collecting Billionaires Of Biometric Data Without Proper Approval

JAKARTA The state government of Texas has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc., as it has been alleged to have collected biometric data on millions of Texas people without obtaining proper approval. This was revealed from the Texas attorney general's office in a statement on Thursday, October 20.

The complaint said companies operating in Texas had been banned for more than a decade to collect the faces, sounds, or biometric data of others without prior consent.

"Responding to the law, Google, since at least 2015, has collected countless biometric data from Texas residents and used their faces and voices to serve Google's commercial purposes," the lawsuit said.

"Indeed, across states, Texas people have become dairy cows every day without realizing it by Google to make a profit," Texas prosecutors said.

Google itself did not immediately return a request for comment from Reuters on the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, the data collection process has been going on through products such as Google Photo, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max.

The lawsuit is one of several lawsuits filed by the state against Google alleging unfair privacy-related practices. The state of Arizona settled a lawsuit in early October with a demand of 85 million US dollars.

Texas, Indiana, Washington State, and the District of Columbia also sued Google in January over what they call fraudulent location tracking practices that invade user privacy.

Texas Attorney General Ken feasibility said in a statement that "indiscriminately collecting" from such data "will not be tolerated."