Is Your TV Spying On You?
The Sean Hannity Show
Sean Hannity
3.7 • 9.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins Rose Tennent for the final hour as "The Sean Hannity Show" shifts gears from the day's headlines into a deep dive on something sitting in millions of living rooms: smart TVs and what they may be doing behind the scenes.
Paxton lays out Texas' lawsuits against major smart TV manufacturers, alleging they've been collecting detailed viewing data on Texans and monetizing it without clear, meaningful consent. He describes an ecosystem where TVs can be sold cheaply because, in his telling, companies earn enormous revenue from marketing based on viewer behavior. Rose presses on the real-world problem for consumers: most people don't even know there's anything to opt out of, and even if they do, the process can be confusing and hard to execute.
The conversation turns more serious as Rose cites warnings from Paxton's office about the possibility of sensitive information being exposed, especially as more people use TV apps to log into accounts and even handle financial transactions. Paxton says discovery is still ahead, but argues manufacturers may be capturing far more than viewers realize.
Then comes the national-security angle: Rose notes that at least one named company is Chinese-owned. Paxton says any unauthorized data collection is concerning, but adds that Chinese possession of that kind of information raises the stakes beyond consumer privacy. He also says Texas is sharing resources with other state attorneys general and hopes more states will join the fight.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.9 | Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show. |
| 0:07.2 | My name is Rose, and I am with you this last hour of the Hannity Show. |
| 0:11.7 | You know, we've got a story that hits right in your living room right now. |
| 0:15.2 | Texas Attorney General Ken Paxson is taking on major smart TV manufacturers |
| 0:20.1 | and then alleging that they are collecting |
| 0:23.0 | data on what Texans watch and when they watch it. |
| 0:26.7 | And then they're selling that information for profit, all without clear consent. |
| 0:31.2 | So joining us now is Attorney General Paxton to explain the lawsuit, the privacy concerns, |
| 0:36.2 | and what viewers can do right now to protect |
| 0:38.6 | themselves. We're also going to talk about his Senate race. Welcome, Attorney General Ken Paxton. |
| 0:43.8 | How are you? I'm doing well. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. We're doing great in Texas. |
| 0:49.9 | I'll bet you are. Texas is a great state. So listen, according to lawsuits that you've filed, TV manufacturers might have |
| 0:57.9 | quietly turned America's living rooms into surveillance hubs by using technology that most |
| 1:03.7 | consumers never agree to. And that's really the very definition of intrusion. |
| 1:08.6 | What exactly did these television companies collect and how much of |
| 1:11.8 | it was taken without Texans ever knowing? Oh, well, first of all, they did it without Texans |
| 1:16.9 | knowing for sure. And they did it without anybody in the United States knowing it. What they do is |
| 1:20.4 | they record every so many milliseconds what you're watching and so they can use that and sell that information to other companies. |
| 1:29.7 | So, you know, if they wanted to do that, they just need to get consent, and if consumers |
| 1:33.9 | agree to that, that's fine. But the problem is they're doing it without consent. Obviously, |
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