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

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

#41

Post by cogman10 »

kstrauser wrote: post #34
cogman10 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd HAPPILY report every single truck rolling coal around me if there was a place to report that information. Hell, I've seen a truck roll coal around cop cars and, obviously, nothing happened. This is just gross privacy intrusion masquerading as "protecting the environment". We don't need 100% compliance to the law and simple prosecution/ticketing of obvious violations would go a long way towards solving the p…

I watched a pickup roll coal in the middle of freaking East Bay, literally within site of downtown San Francisco, on a bicyclist. I reported their license to the California Air Resources Board, and not longer after that I saw it up on jacks in a neighborhood auto shop. That made my day. Asshole.

I'm in Idaho, so not such resource exists. It would have to be a federal agency that does the enforcement because our cops/prosecutors/lawmakers won't ever make something like that happen.

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

#43

Post by like_any_other »

jmyeet wrote: post #26

These companies will likely comply too [1]. Defenders will say "they have to comply with the law" but there's compliance and then there's compliance . For example, an adminstrative subpoena has no power. Companies can and should force the government to go to court and get a court-issued subpoena. This isn't really anything terribly new either. The government regardless of who the current president is will routinely g…

> Defenders will say "they have to comply with the law" but there's compliance and then there's compliance.

More importantly, there's not spying on the user in the first place. The law doesn't force Google to spy, nor does it force Apple to lock consumers (for sure not "owners") out of their phones, so that they're left helpless when the CCP bans VPN and protest apps [1] (not to imply spying from Google alone isn't bad, before any other actors get involved).

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-pulls-mapping-app-used-by-h...

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

#44

Post by bethekidyouwant »

The Department of justice needs witnesses because they’re trying to prove that ez lynk is profiting from the distribution of “emission disabling software” They are not going after any of these individual users. Tldr: they’re trying to get the mod taken off the market.

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

#45

Post by bethekidyouwant »

toss1 wrote: post #37
analogpixel wrote: post #8

Hopefully they hand it over, and all of these people lose their licenses. I'm sick of breathing in their exhaust on the way to work. I think people should have the freedom to do what they want; if you want to have a truck that has horrible exhaust, fine, but we'll have it piped back into your cab for you to breathe instead of the people behind you, and if you want a car that sounds like a thousand go-carts racing dow…

Yeah I also absolutely loath the coal-rollers and everything about what they do, and if I could snap my fingers and have them lose both their trucks and their licenses to drive with no other consequences beyond their frustration, I'd do it. Nevertheless, we cannot allow this good reason for which be both agree to be used as a wedge to let the state just wholesale collect data for whatever reason they want. Very soon,…

But this isn’t actually to throw the coal rollers in jail and take away their trucks it’s to get witnesses so they can build a case to get this mod taken off the market

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

#46

Post by mothballed »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

I've learned never to believe the reasoning provided in DOJ filings. Realize it is written as a calculated manipulative tool to get a particular result. Whether they want it for the purpose stated is almost immaterial. The only thing you can really glean is they want the result is of whatever they're asking for, but no one knows if it is for the reason they state.

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

#47

Post by embedding-shape »

ericmay wrote: post #40
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

The DOJ first sued EZ Lynk in 2021, accusing the Cayman Islands-based company of violating the Clean Air Act by marketing and selling “defeat devices.” These tools allegedly allow users to bypass factory emissions controls on diesel vehicles, primarily through the EZ Lynk Auto Agent app paired with an onboard diagnostic (OBD) hardware dongle. Opponents say “Investigating this claim does not require identifying each p…

> (how will they know who to interview if they can't get the data? duh!)

What I don't understand is how they know someone has to be interviewed, but they don't already know who, which makes me question how the investigation got started in the first place?

> How else would the DOJ obtain evidence if they don't know who is buying the product?

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?

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

#48

Post by legitster »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

> Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then?

They probably have tons of data and testimony from witnesses who use the product illegally. You can find hundreds of threads online of people telling you how to defeat emissions controls using their products.

The case prosecutors want to make is that EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior. If they can show that the majority of users are committing crimes with the app, that's a much stronger case than just rounding up a handful of witnesses.

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

#49

Post by legitster »

ericmay wrote: post #40
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

The DOJ first sued EZ Lynk in 2021, accusing the Cayman Islands-based company of violating the Clean Air Act by marketing and selling “defeat devices.” These tools allegedly allow users to bypass factory emissions controls on diesel vehicles, primarily through the EZ Lynk Auto Agent app paired with an onboard diagnostic (OBD) hardware dongle. Opponents say “Investigating this claim does not require identifying each p…

It's worth pointing out that EZ Lynk is a sleezy company that originally tried to hide behind a Section 230 protection (lol).

Their more recent legal defense of the product was throwing their own users under the bus: "we can't control if our customers are using the product to break laws". So they are the ones who framed all of the customers as potential criminals.

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

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