Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued General Motors (GM) for what he alleges are false and deceptive business practices. The suit, announced yesterday, accuses the auto giant of colluding a wealth of personal driving data from over 1.5 million Texans without their consent and then selling it off to insurance companies, among other entities. General Motors, says Paxton, "violated Texans' privacy and broke the law," as per news release.

This legal action didn't just drop out of a clear blue sky, as it rests on the back of an investigation opened by Paxton in June this year. Paxton's office was looking into several car manufacturers, including GM, for reportedly harvesting massive amounts of data from their vehicles, then flipping that information to third parties for profit. According to a statement obtained by the Texas Attorney General's office, Paxton declared, "Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways."

GM's practices go back to vehicles produced as far back as 2015, equipped with data-collecting technology. The data recorded, analyzed, and transmitted ranges from mundane to highly detailed, documenting each use of the vehicle. Paxton's claim is that General Motors not only collated this data but also sold it to companies for creating "Driving Scores" that were then provided to insurance firms. A sore point for the Attorney General is how customers were misled into thinking OnStar Smart Driver enrolment was a necessity for maintaining their vehicle's safety features, a compulsion that actually served GM's data-selling agenda.

The Texas Attorney General's lawsuit is not just another case of legalese wrangling. It shines a spotlight on a broader initiative focusing on data privacy and security that Paxton rolled out this June. The initiative's goal is to safeguard Texans' privacy rights and ensure that companies adhere to privacy protection laws. While GM's disclosures about their data practices were long and complex, they failed at being completely transparent about the systematic collection and sale of customers' data, as detailed by the Texas Attorney General's office.