Vowing to protect the government’s absolute authority to monitor the private behavior of its residents, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Monday accusing the streaming giant of horning in on state territory.
AUSTIN, TX — Vowing to protect the state government’s absolute authority to monitor the private behavior of its residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Netflix on Monday, accusing the streaming giant of illegally competing with the state’s own surveillance apparatus.
The 54-page complaint alleges that Netflix built a sophisticated, non-consensual data collection program to track the viewing habits, physical locations, and personal information of Texans. Paxton argued this blatant overreach is a direct violation of the foundational legal principle that only the Texas Attorney General's office is permitted to compile invasive dossiers on private citizens.
The idea that a private California tech company thinks it can just waltz into Texas and start secretly monitoring what families do in their own homes is deeply offensive. That is the exclusive domain of the Texas state government, and we will not tolerate out-of-state entities doing our job for us without sharing the resulting spreadsheets.
The lawsuit also criticizes Netflix for designing its platform with manipulative and addictive features designed to keep users engaged for hours. According to the filing, this psychological manipulation severely reduces the amount of free time Texans have to organically generate the kind of actionable behavioral data the state relies on to monitor out-of-state medical travel and library checkout histories.
Paxton’s office confirmed that it is seeking massive financial penalties and a total injunction against the streaming service. If successful in halting the company's illegal spying operation, the Attorney General announced he will immediately subpoena the entirety of Netflix’s illegally obtained database to ensure the data is handled securely by state prosecutors.