> If systems effected by this were sold in Sweden or Germany or other places with relatively strong privacy laws
How is this a privacy issue? Was lenovo collecting information about you? This is more a case of knowingly releasing software that was a security liability on an unacceptable level.
I think the real outcome will be the judicial environment available for the plaintiff. In a lot of eurozone countries, courts don't give out big punishing settlements like we do in the US and are, from my understanding, very, very big business friendly. If anything, the eurozone will be worse than the US if you want a punitive settlement. I know there's a lot of "herp-derp the US is a lawless nightmare of NSA spies" but the reality is that you have a better chance winning here than elsewhere. Look at the Sony rootkit scandal.
Superfish was (well, not me specifically, but customers who bought infected laptops). In the first HN thread about this, someone posted a snippet of the JavaScript injected into every page by Superfish which contained user tracking and retargetting data being sent to Superfish, despite denial by Lenovo of doing exactly that.
"In a lot of eurozone countries, courts don't give out big punishing settlements like we do in the US and are, from my understanding, very, very big business friendly. If anything, the eurozone will be worse than the US if you want a punitive settlement."
That's disappointing. I'd always been led to believe the US was more friendly to corporations than most of western Europe. I am certainly no expert. I did a bunch of research in the past, when considering opening an encrypted mail service, and looked at various privacy discussions, and it seemed like Sweden and Germany were among the best western nations for individual privacy, but maybe that only applies to government spying. Guatemala was pretty solid on privacy, too, but it simply isn't large enough to take on Lenovo.
"California and Texas took Sony to task, not Brussels."
Good for California and Texas. I should go talk to my AG (I live in Austin, Texas), though I guess it'd be better coming from someone who was directly effected.
How is this a privacy issue? Was lenovo collecting information about you? This is more a case of knowingly releasing software that was a security liability on an unacceptable level.
I think the real outcome will be the judicial environment available for the plaintiff. In a lot of eurozone countries, courts don't give out big punishing settlements like we do in the US and are, from my understanding, very, very big business friendly. If anything, the eurozone will be worse than the US if you want a punitive settlement. I know there's a lot of "herp-derp the US is a lawless nightmare of NSA spies" but the reality is that you have a better chance winning here than elsewhere. Look at the Sony rootkit scandal.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2659436/security/sony-rootk...
California and Texas took Sony to task, not Brussels.