If I put laxatives in my drink because I am having digestive issues, and someone steals my drink I don't think that's illegal. If I choose to store exploits on my own device and someone steals it from me and runs it through a forensic tool that can't handle the files, that's not on me either. At a minimum, the vulnerabilities should introduce doubt as to whether or not the capture is a forensically sound copy. There are too many variables otherwise. For instance, who is to say that some previous device didn't exploit the vulnerabilities?

Intent matters.

If the court (it's not that a laxative issue is likely to come to a full court, but still) believes that you did actually put laxatives in your drink because of your digestive issues, then that's legal, but if they get convinced that you did it with the intent to mess with your coworker, then the exact same action is illegal. In a smilar manner, if the court considers it plausible that you did just happen to have that file among various exploits that you store there for a specific reasonable purpose, then that would be legal, but it is illegal if the court considers it likely that you placed the exact same file there with the intent that it will destroy evidence - perhaps based on some other evidence, such as your online discussions on this topic and the timestamps of downloading and placing that file in relation to whatever other crime they are investigating.

Yes, there are many variables in play, but it doesn't make the problem undecidable, if it comes to court, your lawyer and the prosecution will point to them and the jury will decide.

What the law is can't be realistically argued. What the law is is a function of what a prosecutor, jury, and judge collectively are willing to let a conviction go forward on.

This is what bugs me about common law. You can't take a statute at face value anymore once a sufficient amount of case law comes into the picture, and there is no active effort to reconcile the original statute with the reality of the case law it spawns.

I have not seen anyone state what the law actually is. Just a lot of FUD about what I am not allowed to do with my device. If you are a lawyer and can break down what I got wrong and why, I am happy to listen.

I feel confident that if you left a conspicuous note on the sandwich that said "Warning! This sandwich may contain laxatives! Do not eat!" and the thief disregarded it and ate the sandwich anyway, then it would be entirely legal.

I am not a lawyer or even particularly well-read on this specific scenario, but my read of the spirit of the law is that (if it indeed contains laxatives) it might still be illegal. What matters is not whether you sprang a surprise to one-up someone who was violating your rights or they had a fair chance to know what exactly the consequences would be, but that you deployed the laxative with the intent of harming the thief, and most modern legal systems do not like vigilante violence (even if it's "cute" vigilante violence like giving someone diarrhea). For an intuition pump, I'm not sure there is a significant difference between the note in question and "Warning! If you take this sandwich, and I know who you are, I will personally hunt you down, wrestle you to the ground and force-feed you laxatives!" as far as the law is concerned, but would you expect to get away with this act just because the target previously stole your sandwich and you warned them?

(On the other hand, I feel like the zappy USB port may actually be easier to get away with, especially if you say your threat model was corporate spies or criminals trying to steal your password, because "violence against tools" does not seem to be put in the vigilante violence box. Those special materials they have for safe doors that are designed to damage angle grinders (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249275-material-that-c...) are not illegal.)

I know the old laxative in the fridge item has been a stand by in office etiquette enforcement for longer than I've been alive.

The court follows the principle of clean hands. A thief is not going to have a compelling case against someone when they are throwing the first stone by stealing someone's sandwich. It's an interesting take, and I'd have to dive into actual case law to even determine if the test scenario is apocrypha or not. However, I doubt the laxative in sandwich argument would be compelling to a judge when there are much more relevant and easy to reach challenges to overcome.

-I.e. State mandated weakness to exploitation by Law Enforcement (You can't defend yourself from exploits used by Law Enforcement, which you are also not allowed to know about under Executive Privilege) -The ability of the Government to ensure their tooling meets chain of custody preserving standards Etc...

As usual, not a lawyer, just read a book on legal research and reasoning once.

Yes. I expect that if I made myself a Miralax sandwich and labeled it with a huge caution label that I would be fine if someone decided to eat it anyway. It would be trivial to show that I had no intention of harming someone.

You would probably still be sued anyway, because why would a reasonable person make a laxative sandwich? The note is obviously a joke.

The analogy breaks down because the USB zapper isn't intended to cause bodily harm, unlike a laxative.

There's a distinction between setting booby traps that fire shotgun shells and modifying one's device to make it trickier to access. In one case, it maybe necessary to take shelter in a random person's house (cabin in the woods during a blizzard), while in the other the point isn't necessarily to destroy police equipment but to prevent personally-unauthorized extraction by anyone.

That's true, but I didn't put the USB zapper to harm anyone. I use it for testing USB grounding and some officer stole my phone.