The U.S. Department of Justice has subpoenaed Apple and Google for the identities, addresses, and purchase histories of more than 100,000 people who downloaded the EZ Lynk Auto Agent, a vehicle tuning app the government alleges is an emissions defeat device.
The subpoenas, issued in March and April, are part of the DOJ’s civil lawsuit against EZ Lynk, a Cayman Islands-based company first sued in 2021 under the Clean Air Act. Separate subpoenas went to Amazon and Walmart seeking records on EZ Lynk hardware, an on-board diagnostics dongle users plug into their vehicle’s port to install engine tunes, including delete tunes that disable diesel emissions controls.
Forbes first reported on the demand after reviewing a joint court letter from both parties filed earlier this month.
“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. Apple and Google intend to challenge the subpoenas, according to the letter. Walmart declined to comment.
The DOJ countered that users who accepted EZ Lynk’s terms of service “no longer have a cognizable privacy interest as to that information.”
Tom McBrien of the Electronic Privacy Information Center called that logic “worrying,” noting civil discovery falls outside Fourth Amendment protections. Aaron Mackey of the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the argument “particularly problematic.”
This posture contrasts with the administration’s approach to emissions enforcement. The Environmental Protection Agency dropped defeat-device prosecution as a priority in 2023, later said it would not pursue criminal charges for emissions tampering, and President Trump has pardoned a diesel tuner convicted of removing emissions controls from trucks.
The Second Circuit reversed a lower-court dismissal on August 20, 2025, ruling Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act did not shield EZ Lynk from Clean Air Act liability.
