- DOJ wants Apple, Google, Amazon, and Walmart data tied to EZ Lynk customers.
- Privacy advocates say requests for over 100,000 users go far beyond the case.
- The move creates tension with recent signals of softer emissions enforcement.
For years, tuners and performance shops operated knowing where their limitations were. Building hardware or software that touches emissions systems could bring the attention of the federal government down on any business. Then, earlier this year, the Trump administration signaled that it was no longer going to pursue criminal prosecutions over emissions defeat devices. Now the rules have moved again, and the gray area has only grown.
According to Forbes, the U.S. Department of Justice is seeking customer information tied to EZ Lynk, a company at the center of an ongoing Clean Air Act lawsuit. Court filings indicate prosecutors subpoenaed Apple and Google for records on users who downloaded EZ Lynk’s car-tinkering app Auto Agent, while Amazon and Walmart reportedly received requests tied to hardware purchases. We’re not talking about 10 or 20 records, either. More like 100,000 or more.
Read: Trump’s EPA Scraps Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards To Save You Money
The wildest part of the allegation against Cayman Islands-based EZ Lynk might be just how little it directly had to do with the emissions of any given vehicle itself. The app didn’t have a “dump gallons of fuel into the injectors” button. Instead, it was simply a hub or platform. Users plugged an OBDII device into their car, and from there, they could monitor all sorts of vital functions. What the DOJ seems to take issue with is that the app also allowed tuners and customers to connect through it.
From there, a shop could, at the request of an owner, send a tune through the app, and the owner could then install it. This is, in effect, what hundreds, if not thousands of tuners across the USA do every single day, but with the caveat that it’s happening in person without this digital trail that the DOJ is after.
The government’s position appears to be that EZ Lynk built an ecosystem designed around emissions deletes, while the company argues it simply built a tool that could also be used for legal diagnostics, monitoring, and tuning. EZ Lynk says that Google and Apple plan to fight the data demand. Walmart evidently declined to comment.
Lawyers for the EZ Lynk said, “Investigating this claim does not require identifying each person who has used the product.” In case all of this wasn’t messy enough, it gets worse.
In January, the current administration openly said that it was going to stop prosecuting criminal cases tied to emissions software tampering. In fact, the DOJ ordered all such cases to be dropped. That said, what we’re seeing here isn’t a criminal case, which is probably why it’s continuing. The DOJ could, in theory, hit EZ Lynk with huge civil penalties, but only if it can prove the case. It just needs the private data of over 100,000 people to do it, allegedly.
