Yes, this seems a very personal violation if the company is both requiring you to bring your own device and dictating how and what can/must be on it.
Furthermore, the excuse provided here seems flimsy at best: their IT has a legal defense if the laptop was private property (ie, yours) and using a pirated copy of Windows. From a technical perspective there are very easy ways to check if the copy of Windows on your machine thinks it is genuine. Furthermore, there are tools that Microsoft provides to do that in an automated fashion, because Microsoft has considered and supports Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the Enterprise scenarios in Windows itself and provides tools to help companies do that and more successfully walk the tight rope between corporate security and overreach into dictating what an employee may or may not do with their own devices.
(At worst, this excuse seems like just a way to assert control over employee's personal lives/property solely for the purpose of having said control.)
Yes it left a bad taste in my mouth the moment they asked everyone to submit their laptops. What's even more surprising is that no one objected. Not even one (this was a batch of ~60). People are so very eager to give up rights to their own property for $146/month for 6 months. I was more disappointed in the interns than angry at the company.
Furthermore, the excuse provided here seems flimsy at best: their IT has a legal defense if the laptop was private property (ie, yours) and using a pirated copy of Windows. From a technical perspective there are very easy ways to check if the copy of Windows on your machine thinks it is genuine. Furthermore, there are tools that Microsoft provides to do that in an automated fashion, because Microsoft has considered and supports Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the Enterprise scenarios in Windows itself and provides tools to help companies do that and more successfully walk the tight rope between corporate security and overreach into dictating what an employee may or may not do with their own devices.
(At worst, this excuse seems like just a way to assert control over employee's personal lives/property solely for the purpose of having said control.)