EFF Files Amicus Brief Defending the Right to Repair in Massachusetts

This week, EFF joined with several prominent right-to-repair groups to file an amicus brief in the United States District Court of Massachusetts defending the state’s recent right-to-repair law. This law, which gives users and independent repair shops access to critical information about the cars they drive and service, passed by ballot initiative with an overwhelming 74.9% majority.

Almost immediately, automakers asked to delay the law. In November, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a group that includes Honda, Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and other major carmakers, sued the state over the law. The suit claims that allowing people to have access to the information generated by their own cars poses serious security risks.

This argument is nonsense, and we have no problem joining our fellow repair advocates—iFixit, The Repair Association, US PIRG, SecuRepairs.org, and Founder/Director of the Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic Professor Jonathan Askin—in saying so.

 Access Is Not a Threat

The Massachusetts law requires vehicles with a telematics platform—software that collects and transmits diagnostic information about your car—to install an open data platform.  The Alliance for Automotive Innovation argues that the law makes it “impossible” to comply with both the state’s data access rules and federal standards.

Nonsense. Companies in many industries must balance data access and cybersecurity rules, including for electronic health records, credit reporting, and telephone call records. In all cases, regulators have recognized the importance of giving consumers access to their own information as well as the need to protect even the most sensitive information.

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