> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used.
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.
Yeah, I'd HAPPILY report every single truck rolling coal around me if there was a place to report that information.
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.
I watched a pickup roll coal in the middle of freaking East Bay, literally within site of downtown San Francisco, on a bicyclist. I reported their license to the California Air Resources Board, and not longer after that I saw it up on jacks in a neighborhood auto shop. That made my day. Asshole.
If you've ever seen any body cam footage on YouTube I'd wager that about half of them have a moment where the cop is asking someone for information they're not legally required to provide, and it's framed as "I have to investigate." The smart ones reply with some flavor of "ok, I'm not required to help you investigate."
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."
I am surprised that a lawsuit started in 2021 about maintaining emission standards survived up to this point. The DOGE search terms must have misspelled "emission"
No, it will continue to work just fine. The restrictions are being added to Google Play Services, not Android itself. I and many others do not run closed source software like Google Play Services on our devices.
These companies will likely comply too [1]. Defenders will say "they have to comply with the law" but there's compliance and then there's compliance. For example, an adminstrative subpoena has no power. Companies can and should force the government to go to court and get a court-issued subpoena.
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.
This does seem like a fishing expedition though there is a facially legitimate purpose.
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.
The saddest part is, most people simply do not care, my parents constantly echo the sentiment that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear. I would argue this slippery slope came about 20+ years ago during the initial Patriot Act. They normalize the behavior, take a few more freedoms, and keep on trucking. I used to be proud to be American. Now I am just worried.
I understand why they don't care and I don't fault them. The truth is that this doesn't affect most people in their daily lives. It sounds entitled to say that this demands their attention.
Tyranny comes and goes, and sometimes just changes shape and serves some more than others, and that gives the illusion to those it serves that it's gone. It's always been around in some form or another.
It would be more concise and the analysis section at the end would be more useful. I still read it I just hate reading articles online knowing I could have run a chatgpt deep research to the same effect.
Can you tell me what you would cut, in this article, specifically, that would make it more meaningfully concise?
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.
Writing it myself would mean doing the research myself. How would I do that? ChatGPT can do it faster at scale. Then the summaries are short enough that cutting any particular part wouldn't make sense. I could re-word it, I guess.
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!
Hopefully they hand it over, and all of these people lose their licenses. I'm sick of breathing in their exhaust on the way to work.
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".
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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
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!
It'll void any warranty.
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