Texas Sues Temu, Lorex Over Alleged CCP Ties
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Lorex and Temu on Feb. 19 over the companies’ suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—the third and fourth such lawsuits Paxton has brought in three days.
Canada-based Lorex is a leading surveillance camera company that sells products such as doorbell cameras and baby monitors.
It was previously owned by Dahua, a Chinese tech company that was blacklisted by the United States after it was determined that the company aided the Chinese communist regime in its persecution of Uyghurs, which the United States has designated a genocide.
Lorex did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
The legal action follows an investigation Paxton announced into Lorex in 2025.
Temu is a popular e-commerce app held by China-founded PDD Holdings, which Paxton alleges is harvesting consumer data for the benefit of the CCP. Temu did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.
The lawsuits follow legal action Paxton took this week against router company TP-Link over alleged ties to CCP-sponsored cyber campaigns against the United States and dronemaker Anzu Robotics over ties to blacklisted DJI.
Dahua Buys, Sells Lorex
Dahua is a major security camera company, supplying 180 countries and territories and counting among its clients Vatican City, the Rio Olympics, and the city of London.It bought Lorex in 2018. In 2019, the Commerce Department blacklisted Dahua over its involvement in the CCP’s persecution of Uyghurs. The Pentagon later designated it a Chinese military company for fiscal year 2021, which did not come with any penalties at the time.
Then in 2021, Congress passed a law requiring the Federal Communications Commission to ban equipment on these blacklists.
One day before the ban was to go into effect in 2022, Dahua sold Lorex to Taiwan-based Skywatch, so the restriction no longer applied to Lorex cameras.
Paxton is alleging that “Dahua has remained involved with Lorex’s operations” and is therefore bringing the suit under Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
He is accusing the company of “exploiting” parents’ wishes to protect their children, as a result of which they place its cameras in “the most private sanctuaries of the home.”
“We fully intend to contest the allegations made by the Attorney General, and we are confident that a fair hearing will determine that Lorex has taken the appropriate steps to safeguard customer privacy,” the company stated at the time.
Attorney General Calls Temu ‘Spyware’
In the Temu lawsuit, Paxton alleged that the company has unlawfully deceived consumers by exposing them to “a digital security threat” when using its website or app.“Temu utilizes dangerous software functions that are completely inappropriate for a simple e-commerce retailer,“ the attorney general stated, alleging that the app creates a ”backdoor” that bypasses users’ security protocols.
The lawsuit cites Google’s 2023 suspension of the Chinese version of Temu, called Pinduoduo, after it was found to contain malware, raising concerns that Temu could have similar issues. The app was later reinstated.
As of September 2023, Temu had 82.4 million active users in the United States.
The lawsuit also cites a 2023 report by Grizzly Research that concluded that the app was a national security risk after finding that the app requested and obtained unusually vast access to user devices.
“Temu is Chinese Communist spyware disguised as a shopping app,“ Paxton said. ”Texans deserve transparency, privacy, and protection from foreign adversaries that exploit their personal data.”
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