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Comment by 1ris | Hacker News Reader

What about criminal prosecution? In plenty jurisdictions this is illegal. Wiretaping, unauthorised access, unauthorised decryption, "Hacking", breach of privacy (manybe even copyright infringement; they edited other peoples content without their permission) or something like that is usually prosecuted harshly if it's done by a individual. I hope a company does not get away with it.

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I hope that there will be legal ramifications to discourage this kind of behavior, but ultimately, the vendor that packaged Superfish with the computers is a Chinese company who will probably claim that this kind of thing is permitted by their EULA.

What does it matter that Lenovo is chinese and Superfish Israeli?

Damn right. A grand jury can indict without the defendant present (in fact that's how it usually works). Then the US can work to extradite, or just arrest if any of the defendants ever try to enter the US.

Well, you know, we don't even arrest employees of American companies, like anyone on Wall Street.

Although Superfish was founded in Israel, they're headquartered in Palo Alto now.

The nationality of Lenovo is relevant insofar as it affects the applicability of US law. IANAL so I can't say how relevant that fact is, but I suspect it complicates litigation..

As long as lenovo makes money in the USA, they are easily subject to litigation there.

That's not how it works. Even if your plumber has "I might come back later and take look your safe" hidden somewhere in his EULA, it's still burglary. Laws are, thank god, over EULAs.

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