♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, airtag stalking. the helpful tech and how some are using it in nefarious ways. this swimsuit model says she was tracked. >> home alone on a dark street by myself, panic set in. >> the mother who blames them for her son's death. >> had that device not been in that car, my son would still be living today. >> and the experts sounding the alarm. >> it really is a question of, are you going to stop selling this before more people get hurt? >> how to know if you're being tracked. plus bad acts. the oscar short-listed documentary chronicling one family's journey. >> my mom, mexican american woman. my dad, a cambodian refugee.

>> how the pandemic threatened their american dream. >> our whole life changed, shut down. >> their decision to take a stand after george floyd's murder. >> my parents always taught us to stand up for people, stand up for the right thing, do the right thing. ♪ bad blood ♪ and taylor swift just in time for valentine's day. a breakup-themed bar for those with bad blood for their exes. aah, it's a good day to cough. oh, no! bye, bye cough. later chest congestion. hello 12 hours of relief. 12 hours!! hmmm, ok. not coughing at yoga? antiquing not coughing? not coughing at the movies?! hashtag still not coughing?! aaah. oww! mucinex dm gives you 12 hours of relief from chest congestion and any type of cough, day or night. it's not cough season.

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♪ thanks for joining us. tonight, it's being called the weapon of choice for stalkers and abusers. airtags, the size of a small coin, light enough to attach to almost anything and track it almost anywhere on earth. the very thing that makes them useful gadgets also makes them potentially dangerous in the wrong hands. >> had that device not been in that car, my son would still be living today. she found my son because of the apple airtag. >> reporter: a mother's anguish laid bare. >> i have to take medications in order to make it through a day without crying. i cry so much, every day, every night. and still do.

>> reporter: laprecious sanders still distraught after the murder of her 26-year-old son, andre smith, allegedly at the hands of a girlfriend. >> a man dead, a woman accused of running him over with a car is under arrest. >> she just kept going. she went ahead and run my son over, and she didn't do it once, she did it three times. of my son.d car sitting on top - >> reporter: indianapolis police say galen morris tracked smith to a local bar with a device she hid in his car, an apple airtag. >> the night of his murder, the young lady in the car with him, she told me and my family that andre had told her, "somebody's following us." he kept looking at his phone. so she said that her and andre were looking around the car, but they just couldn't find the apple airtag. >> reporter: morris later charged with one count of felony murder by marion county police. she's pleaded not guilty.

the same night he was killed, police allowed andre's family to take his car home. >> my oldest son, he was so hurt. and he just started ripping the car up. i don't know what made him just -- he just started tearing through the car. and he tore the passenger seat out. he flipped it over. and there lay the apple airtag. >> reporter: about the size of a quarter, the airtag is a convenient and portable device that allows an apple user to track whatever it's placed on. critics say that makes it ripe for potential abuse. >> when you're selling a cheap, ubiquitous tracking device, the product is the problem. it really is a question of, are you going to stop selling this before more people get hurt? >> reporter: albert fox cahn fights against tech overreach as the executive director of the surveillance technology oversight project. >> tell me your reaction when apple introduced the airtag. >> exasperation, disbelief. here it is rolling out a cheap,

easily abused device. and completely ignoring the ways that similar technologies have been exploited in the past. >> reporter: almost immediately after airtags debuted in april 2021, reports surfaced people were unwittingly finding them in their purses, backpacks, cars, pockets. model brooks nader was walking home from a new york city bar when her iphone notified her that an airtag was found moving with you. >> never have i gotten this notification before. alone on a dark street, panicked. i sent a text to my husband to let him know what was going on in case something happened on my walk home. >> reporter: nader's husband found the airtag in her front coat pocket. cahn showed us how an iphone notifies users about an unknown airtag. >> that's the type of alert? >> yeah. >> reporter: and according to apple, this is the sound an unknown airtag would play when it's been moving with you over time. [ tone sounding ]

>> it was just absolutely terrifying. >> reporter: in august 2021, lauren hughes had just ended a relationship with an ex-boyfriend when she found an airtag in her car. >> even though my phone told me one was moving with me, i had no idea how long it had been there and if he knew the neighborhood i lived in or was looking at moving to. and that's the scariest part about it. >> reporter: hughes is one of two named plaintiffs in a recent class action lawsuit filed in california that claims apple airtags have been, quote, the weapon of choice for stalkers and abusers, charging the tech company with negligence, intrusion upon seclusion, and product liability. gillian wade is one of the attorneys who filed the class action complaint. >> if a product is small, the product is $29, and it can virtually follow you anywhere in the world that you go. it is really creepy.

one of our clients, the airtag was not only placed under the wheel well of her car, but it was colored in black to match the car so that she wouldn't see it. it's impossible to turn it off, too, without taking the battery out. >> reporter: abc news reached out to apple. the company said they could not comment on ongoing litigation, referring to a statement from february of 2022 which states in part, "incidents of airtag misuse are rare. however, each instance is one too many. airtag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person's property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products." another criticism, android users won't get airtag tracking download a special app. y - >> but it doesn't even give them the same protection that apple users get. so as an apple user, you have something that runs in the background of your phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

looking for nearby airtags. if you're an android user, you have to launch this piece of software and manually scan each and every time. who is going to do that? >> honestly, i'm really hurt. i'm hurt. i'm really, honestly, tell you the truth, i'm pissed. because they're sitting here making money off this device. >> reporter: in june of 2021, apple updated software so that a user's iphone would notify them of the location of an unknown airtag that was moving with them. and even emit a sound after a period of time. if you get a notification that there's an airtag traveling with you that isn't yours, it is delayed. it doesn't happen immediately. it can take up to 48 hours before you would even know. apple was warned by advocacy groups for domestic violence survivors and other industry groups that were concerned about the potential misuse of the product. >> airtags have their fans, especially travelers keeping track of luggage.

valerie was able to pinpoint where her lost suitcase was even though united airlines insisted it was in a different location. >> i recommend both those things to anyone who's checking a bag. it was locked, there was an airtag inside. >> what would you say to folks who say, it's really useful? >> to me, the convenience of being able to track your luggage isn't worth putting other people at risk of potentially being assaulted or stalked. >> reporter: back in indiana, laprecious says her family, including son andre's 5-year-old daughter, is still trying to process his murder. >> she's hurting. that little baby is hurting so bad. and how can you comfort her with this -- with this pain? my son spent so much time with his baby. all the time.

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♪ the sievs are not your typical rural michigan family. their blend of cultures is quite unique. their story of struggle and

success couldn't be more american. food is clearly a labor of love for the siev family. >> how much rice did you need? >> reporter: it's their family business, their legacy, a mix of their two cultures. >> one of the rolls is a mexican roll. that's the cool thing about our sushi. it's kind of like our family. a blend of cultures and blend of ethnicities. >> reporter: that legacy put at risk during the pandemic. their restaurant, rachel's, in bad axe, michigan, struggled as customers stayed home. one solution, sushi night. >> the crazy thing is there is not a sushi restaurant within an hour and a half of bad axe, nowhere to go. we tried it at the restaurant, now it's like a thing. >> reporter: one of the many ways this small business tried to innovate in order to survive. >> we pivoted like so many restaurants across the country. we had to be innovative.

it was something the community really looked forward to every weekend, where they could pull up to rachel's and get their order of sushi. >> reporter: staying afloat was just the beginning. rachel's became theater for a bigger drama in their town of just 3,000 people. >> if you're going to end up digging yourself your own grave -- >> reporter: their saga of grappling with america's racial reckoning subject of a documentary "bad axe" by filmmaker david siev, who happens to be the family's middle son. what made you decide to do a documentary? >> at the beginningful the pandemic when i moved back home from new york to bad axe, i just picked up the camera. there was intuition. i always knew i wanted to share my family's story. when i look at my parents, my mom, she's a mexican american woman. my dad, a cambodian refugee. these are two individuals that to me epitomize the american dream. >> your family is not just the

american dream, but the american immigrant experience. >> right. being cambodian-mexican in a small town that is 97% white. you realize and see that you're different. >> i grew up saying, as a refugee, you have a really thick skin. you don't let too many things bother you. april 17, 1975, everything changed. >> reporter: the documentary explores the story of david's father, chun, who escaped the killing fields of cambodia and found refuge in america. he fell in love with rachel, who grew up in michigan with mexican heritage. the couple trying their hand at running a small business. >> when we first came to bad axe and opened up a doughnut shop, we didn't exactly fit in. the town of 4,000 residents, it's not easy making a living off of doughnuts. >> tell me how being a cambodian refugee informed the way you raised your children. >> see how you can improve your

life, see how you can build your business, work hard, put the kids through school. you want them to be independent, you want them to be able to speak their mind. >> i top them with avocado. >> don't drop it. >> whose is this, what is this? >> reporter: during the pandemic, as businesses across the country were ordered to close, that dream was thrown into jeopardy. so many immigrant families are disproportionately in small businesses. when covid hit, small businesses were hit hard. >> it was a lot of fear. a lot of anxiety. because it was almost as if two decades of hard work were being threatened and so much uncertainty. we didn't know what was going to happen. >> reporter: as america was coming to terms with its own racial reckoning, the siev family had a choice. >> i feel one of the reasons why my parents were able to make the restaurant successful is because they assimilated in the way that

people expect them to. come to work, get your stuff done, don't open your mouth, don't say too much, don't speak up too loud. my parents are good at biting their tongue. but i don't think i can be that way. >> when the black lives matter protests started up, you guys knew what it meant to stick your neck out. >> yes. >> what made you decide to protest anyway? >> i guess growing up, being the daughter of a cambodian refugee, you grow up hearing of people that were oppressed. so it's always been -- my parents always taught us to, you know, stand up for people, stand up for the right thing, do the right thing. >> i was very nervous. i would have a pit in my stomach going, oh, what's going to come out of this? >> we got this letter in the mail today from a very angry customer. "my family and many will be changing our restaurant routine, and rachel's is no longer a choice." about 10 exclamation marks.

i feel like exactly what we were afraid of happening, by i guess sharing our family's story and speaking up, is happening. >> what has the community reaction been? because i know that on some level, you got some blowback. >> these are our neighbors, these are the people who i grew up with and who make up a part of bad axe. and to see those comments and get those phone calls, it was really, really hurtful. there was a lot of positive support, though. but unfortunately, those negative ones, those voices speak louder than they need to. >> reporter: one voice hoping to amplify the siev story, korean american hollywood icon daniel dae kim, serving as executive producer on the indie documentary. they went from a place of real fear of backlash to standing ovations, literally and figuratively. >> yeah, i think that's something really important to point out. we're not just talking about ideas, we're talking about danger and the threat of real

harm. i do love the fact that people who were detractors of the film have since become supporters. and the reason that they had become supporters is not because they agree with the sievs' beliefs politically, it's because they see them now in a new way, as human beings. >> reporter: that unifying message helping the film make the oscars short list. >> we got it. >> reporter: an honor which of course david shares with his whole family. >> we got it, oh my god! >> it's a dream come true in so many ways. because this was a film that at its core -- it's an independent film. coming as far as we have, it represents that personal stories matter. our stories matter. and representation matters. >> reporter: david's parents are now traveling the country as the documentary racks up red carpet accolades and online support, giving them the courage to continue lifting their voice.

>> but after doing what we've been doing the last year, i have so much courage now. and i think it's because of the support, not just from our community, but from everywhere we go. and that love is what really makes everything better. >> that's amazing. so you said this film is about what it means to be an american? what does it mean to be an american? >> the american dream for my parents was more about creating a better life for your family, you know. keeping your head down. being able to financially support your family. whereas now, i think the american dream and this american experience for the new generation, for my generation, is more about having a voice. being able to speak as loudly and proudly as anybody else in this country. >> "bad axe" is available for rent or purchase online and on demand. up next, all alone this valentine's day? a popup bar in chicago may just be the thing, especially if you're a taylor swift fan.

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even those who found their love story. ♪ love story baby just say yes ♪ >> that's "nightline." you can watch all our full episodes on hulu. see you right back here same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america. the hulu and disney+ bundle. lets go. the stories that move us. this is the way. glorious. the shows everyone is talking about. yes chef. when you love, you know you're alive. that's a good line. i wish i was recording. plus... a whole lot more. ♪