Interesting report from Intel came out recently which is also (sparsely) corroborated by Apple's FAQ entry on the subject. Very interesting... and surprising. You'd think that perhaps someone like the FCC would have rules in place to keep this kind of thing from happening!
This isn't something that FCC regulations would easily catch. I'm assuming that the USB connector is properly grounded when the hard drive was being tested and no device was connected when the laptop was being tested.