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 the tool, find the users who use the tool in the way you don't approve of, then request the information for those?
Really bananas approach to go for "Every single user of the app" and "Everyone who bought a dongle" when it has very real and legal use cases.
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 problem outright. Much like we didn't need our cars emailing prosecutors every time someone drove without a seat belt on. Cops giving out tickets for not wearing a seatbelt was enough.
This seems like a much more invasive, much more expensive version of that. "We have [potentially spurious] evidence that this application is used in way we deem a Bad Thing. We need to violate the privacy of this company and thousands of individuals to gather evidence that we should be required to get before bringing this suit in the first place, but we're the government so we don't have to do that."
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.
That's not a a valid argument. That's just an opinion.
The DOJ obtained a lawful subpoena through the legal system to request this information. The legal case is against EZ Lynk and by interviewing users (how will they know who to interview if they can't get the data? duh!) they can build their case against EZ Lynk and their product if the main usage is violating the Clean Air Act.
How else would the DOJ obtain evidence if they don't know who is buying the product?
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.
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 down the street fine, but it'll be through headphones destroying your hearing every time you hit the gas.
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, the reason the state wants to wholesale collect data will be for a reason we entirely disagree. That is not an "IF", it is a "WHEN".
So, no, this isn't a justification.
Very soon, that ca
I would not be surprised to see double sided phone cases so we can carry our big brother phone with our real phone.
There is some prior art in people being forced to carry a "work phone" and a "personal phone" at the same time.
There will be strange product marketing effects. If you only carry one phone, you can currently talk people into spending over $1K on a high tier big brother phone. But if you only use a big brother phone for bank apps and only at home, a $1K phone from Apple or Samsung is a hard sell, I'd be more likely to spend $1K on a really nice anti big brother phone on ali express or whatever.
It'll void any warranty.
Fortunately, we have more powerful policy tools to clean the air than attacking individual gearheads... convert America to an electric car system. You need to attack these problems at the point of production. Consumption side approaches are petty and not very effective.
This isn't really anything terribly new either. The government regardless of who the current president is will routinely go after individuals for (allaegedly) hurting coprorate profits. We saw it in the Napster/Limewire era, in the BitTorrent era and even with physical products far earlier than that. There's a ban on importing cars less than 25 years old because Mercedes-Benz dealerships lobbied for a law in the 1980s because too many people were importing them directly from Germany at a lower cost [2].
Heck, 60 years of Cuban embargoes and sanctions as well as the 1954 Guatemala coup were US efforts at the behest of the United Fruit Company. Same thing for oil and the 1953 Iranian coup.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-broke-its-promi...
[2]: https://www.jalopnik.com/the-25-year-import-rules-history-is...
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...
EGreg•55m ago
squibonpig•47m ago
EGreg•47m ago
squibonpig•44m ago
EGreg•39m ago
The point isn't that you can't run the deep research. Everyone now has more capabilities, and if you want to waste time and tokens you can do it. The point is someone has done the work compiling these, and made it available once, for everyone to read. Think "caching". It has the exact amount of information needed to show the details of every attack. There is a lot. Sadly making it "concise" will remove information -- there is that much.
I do usually make edits to an article after I get it from an AI, as an editor would do when a writer submits something. I hate having AI shibboleths like "It's not X. It's Y". So I make it more humanized. But at the end of the day, the article does what it's supposed to do: make people aware of things in one place, rather than have to research it themselves every time.
ane•25m ago
Just like I don't want to look at AI art or listen to AI music, I don't want to read AI written blogslop.
The web is now full of shit. What a waste.
EGreg•17m ago
Why don't you write all your assembly code yourself? Why do you use a compiler? Why do you generate images, when you can draw them yourself? You're supposed to add value.
I don't think preparing a list of all the threats, editing it and publishing it for others is a "waste". I'm not publishing random stuff, this is important and in line with what I want people to know.
Some people on HN downvote any criticism of AI, other people complain that things are written by AI. If you're such big fans of AI being used more and more, then accept the consequences!
verall•9m ago