I'm on record around here about being angry with Yosemite sending requests off-machine, and it's the first thing I turn off. Lenovo enables anyone, anywhere, to MitM your bank.

Difference in kind. Massive, massive difference in kind.

I imagine that whoever made the decision in Lenovo didn't understand that's what they were doing. They heard "(technical jargon)... replaces some adverts on webpages... Profit!" and signed off on it.

That's not an excuse for this, but it smells like incompetence rather than deliberate malice (at least on Lenovo's part - Superfish/Komodia may be another story).

I soundly reject the notion that everyone in Lenovo's chain of auditing and implementation just heard "technical jargon". No company is magically and universally nontechnical. And anyone who allowed this to pass and remains employed there is culpable.