Comment by legitster
12 hours ago
> 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.
> 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 still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.
Suppose 20,000 people buy it and use it for defeating emissions. Some other number of people buy it for the normal thing. Why does it matter at all whether the other number is 50 or 50 million? Those are the people who aren't relevant. Should the OEM be in trouble if some unrelated third party happens to write the emissions defeat code to require their dongle in particular so they have a high proportion of customers using it for that? Should they get away with promoting it for that if they're a huge company with lots of sales to people not using it for that? None of that should matter. The seller doesn't even control what the users are doing with it, nor should they.
If there is a law against advertising it for defeating emissions then prosecute them for the advertising. That's their crime, what the customers do is third party action.
> I still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.
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.
That doesn't address the issue at all. Why should the damages depend on what third parties do?
On top of that, wow, if you're familiar with how humans think and how prosecutors write indictments, that's some weak sauce. Look at this:
> 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.
They worked with some developers. No claim that they knew what the developers were planning to produce at the time. Later the same developers published something alleged to be illegal.
> 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.
Users posted things on social media. There was a thing called "EZ Lynk Forum" that wasn't even entirely controlled by the company and from what I can tell was actually a Facebook group. The group listed the (presumably publicly known) contact info for their tech 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.
"Interacted with" as in the company's peons weren't lawyers, so their PR flacks liked posts praising the company and their tech support answered tech support questions, without paying attention to whether the user was doing something they weren't supposed to.
This is looking increasingly like a farce. That kind of stuff is vapid. If a user has a tech support question and mentioning that they want to defeat emissions means the company refuses to answer it then the user just comes back later or with a different account and asks the same question without mentioning their use case, right?
These kinds of prosecutions are the worst. It's punishing a company for saying the wrong things, i.e. having insufficiently aggressive lawyers, even if it has no real effect on what they do. It's a trap for the unwary and a bludgeon against companies insufficiently bureaucratic to have all their employees trained in corporate censorship practices.
Why are they subpoenaing Apple and Google for this information instead of EZ Lynk for their own records of distribution?
> The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.
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.
> EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior.
idk, knife makers are knowingly enabling knife attacks. If there's at least one EZLynk customer who isn't breaking a law then it seems to me the company is in the clear. I would use a gun analogy but, in the US, guns have constitutional protection.
I think the difference is that a knife is more or less used for what the manufacturer advertises it for.
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.
> The case prosecutors want to make is that EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior.
We have decades of legal precedent saying that the makers of products with substantial legal uses should not be held responsible for the illegal actions of some of their customers.
Most recently, we have the Supreme Court ruling that ISPs are not liable for customers who use their internet connection for copyright infringement.
Then they don’t need to unmask users to get testimony, right?