The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking the identities, addresses, and purchase histories of at least 100,000 people who used a car app tied to alleged Clean Air Act violations.
Forbes reports that the DOJ issued subpoenas in March and April to Google, Apple, Amazon, and Walmart seeking user records connected to EZ Lynk, the maker of the Auto Agent app and a related car diagnostic tool.
The subpoenas are part of an ongoing case against EZ Lynk. The company was first sued in 2021 for allegedly manufacturing and selling a device designed to bypass computerized emissions controls on cars.
“Emissions controls on cars and trucks protect the public from harmful effects of air pollution. EZ Lynk has put the public’s health at risk by manufacturing and selling devices intended to disable those emissions controls,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said at the time. “Through our lawsuit, we will prevent Defendants from continuing to sell this product and impose civil penalties to hold them to account.”
Now, the government is trying to force major tech and retail companies to hand over information on people who downloaded the app or bought the EZ Lynk devices, in hopes of finding witnesses to testify in the case.
In a joint letter from EZ Lynk and the DOJ filed in court earlier this month, the government argued that its requests are fair and appropriate because lawyers want to interview witnesses about their use of EZ Lynk’s products.
The DOJ also argued that when EZ Lynk users provided their personal information to the company and agreed to its terms and conditions, they lost “a cognizable privacy interest as to that information.”
EZ Lynk, however, disagrees.
“These requests for potentially hundreds of thousands of people’s PII go well beyond the needs of this case and create serious privacy concerns,” EZ Lynk’s lawyers wrote in the letter, according to Forbes. “Investigating this claim does not require identifying each person who has used the product.”
The letter also claims that Google and Apple plan to challenge the subpoenas.
EZ Lynk, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Walmart did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s requests for comment.
EZ Lynk also claimed in the letter that this isn’t the first time the government has tried to obtain personal data about its customers. The company said the government in 2019 requested “a backdoor to the EZ Lynk system that would allow government monitoring of unsuspecting users.”
The government denied asking for an “inappropriate backdoor.”
