Thanks for the link to the excerpt thing about posting, I wonder whats up with wired and extremetech... they dont want to be posted here at all?
No idea in those two cases, but it's not uncommon in large corporations for house counsel to hand down the orders as to policy decisons for "matters related to legal issues", and have their orders carried out without question.
Seems like the bigger the corporation, the larger the hierarchy, the less possible it is to get anything to happen that's not printed in the Policy Manual. Managers actually THINKING is largely a thing of the past ("IMO").