U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

I had no idea this was a thing, much less that it was something people did on purpose.

In terms of US cultural exports, for every jazz music and snowboarding I guess there has to be some coal rolling and fake service dogs.

To me that seems perfectly in line with being libertarian. One of the legitimate roles of the government is protecting people from violence by other people. Libertarians are not anarchists.

The difference is this company provides a bunch of cloud services to roll out specific tunes at scale.

From the original filing:

> "EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at least two delete tune creators during development and before launching the EZ Lynk System. Those creators later disseminated delete tunes using the EZ Lynk System. There were numerous social media websites, including the “EZ Lynk Forum,” where third parties discussed using the EZ Lynk System to defeat emission controls. The Forum was run by EZ Lynk and one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development, and it provided contact information for EZ Lynk technical support. EZ Lynk representatives interacted with posts and videos about deleting emission controls and installing delete tunes, including tunes from one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development."

So it does seem like the DOJ is going after them for collaborating on developing and enabling the tunes. I suspect the subpoena is about establishing damages.

Now you have me wondering if this is their real target, to go after people who are defeating CRM on their vehicles so they can repair them themselves or in their small mom-and-pop garage of choice. But right to repair is popular, so they have to claim it's for something else.

Something similar has happened with gun manufacturers regularly. It's relatively easy to make a semi-automatic user-convertible into an automatic weapon. But selling your rifle with instructions like "we absolutely DO NOT RECOMMEND cutting this specific notch off of the trigger group with a hacksaw BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ILLEGAL" has not been appreciated by the ATF or our court system.

"You knowingly enabled $XYZ", etc.

Or AI companies, for that matter...

> The question is, how did the investigation got started, unless they already can see that people are misusing the product? And since they obviously must be able to see that people are misusing it, why don't they instead obtain evidence about those specific users, that they must have observed already?

Well you'd have to get into the legal case for the specifics, but I don't think this is an accurate assumption to make. They can just see the product "on the shelf", test it for themselves, realize it can be used to violate the Clean Air Act, and then request the ability to talk to the consumers of the product to see how they use the product or if they've used it to violate the Clean Air Act. You don't have to engage with a specific person at all.

How else do you get what might be illegal products off the shelves? Perhaps the users primarily use it for other purposes and the interviews bear that out? That would inform the DOJ and the court on the merits of the case.

The balance is in tailoring the access that the investigators have to the SOMEONE ELSE. They have to convincingly demonstrate the connection between the questions they want to ask the third party and their ability to legally use that evidence to further their case.

It’s like saying the cops can’t subpoena the taxi dispatcher because the suspect only ever talked with the driver.

Clearly there is a single driving agenda, which Google and the government are largely in harmony on, to try to approach 100% real-identity-tying to every activity done online.

Where once, “online” meant generally greater anonymity than “IRL” activities, since most things could be signed up for with an arbitrary throwaway email address and no proof of identity. It is now or shortly will be the opposite.

For things requiring Play Integrity, I picked up a $20 burner carrier-locked Motorola phone at Walmart for $30. It's WiFi-only, given that I'm never going to pay for service on it, but I can also tether it to my main phone. It's also useful for writing one-star reviews on apps that require Play Integrity to function, which is something everyone should be doing.

Ironically the phones with best third party rom support are google pixels. Good luck getting lineageos support or even unlocked bootloader on a random aliexpress phone. You might be able to sideload without restriction, but the ROM is probably gimped, won't receive updates, and has random privileged apps possibly spying on you.

Here's a legal view that explains it further [1].

Basically, they can deny warranty service if you make modifications, and they can tie it to a failure. You can add 100s of HP to your engine profile with these things, and why would it be reasonable to expect a manufacturer to warrant related component repairs if they're pushed beyond spec?

Here are relevant quotes, and []'s are mine.

> The Magnuson Moss Warranty Act requires manufacturers to honor their warranties and auto manufacturers only warrant their vehicles against manufacturing defects. Your claim here could be denied because the failure was not due to a defect in a factory component. It was caused by something added to the car[...] That system caused a non-defective part to fail. Your mod did not void the [entire] warranty. It’s just that the failure was not caused by a factory defect.

> Obviously, an aftermarket camshaft or a hopped up ECU won’t void the entire warranty on your car. The master cylinder failed? The blue tooth quit working? Unless there is a logical connection between the mod and the part or system that failed, you should be good to go.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

[1] https://lehtoslaw.com/will-modifications-void-new-car-warran...

Adding insult, one guy had his comprehensive insurance coverage lapse right before!

But if they get this thing taken off the market, that’s a huge loss for all of us because there are a ton of things this type of tool enables, many of them things people like us would be very interested in. Such as disabling privacy-invasive telematics, or disabling features like stop start, which I can personally attest has caused significant repair issues with the engine on my last car.

Having access to a tool like this is to a car what having an administrator account is on a PC. Without it, you are merely a guest, not an owner of the system.