If an FBI or some law enforcement agent is on the Dark Web posing as a user, does this constitute entrapment? If an FBI or some law enforcement agent is on the Dark Web posing as a user, does this constitute entrapment? They do not inform you of their status. Sharing personal information is not very frequent there, but if it does come up and they directly do not mention occupation if asked, will you be able to avoid future charges initiated with this contact because they were not honest?
A law enforcement officer not telling you they are a law enforcement officer is not entrapment; it's just undercover police work. Entrapment involves the law enforcement officer inducing the perpetrator to commit a crime that they otherwise would not. Will you be able to avoid future charges initiated with this contact because they were not honest? Of course not, there is no obligation on a law enforcement officer to be honest if being dishonest is in accordance with their job requirements at the time. For example, it is perfectly legal for a male 45-year-old police officer to pretend to be a 14-year-old female on the web in an attempt to catch pedophiles. If the officer induced the perpetrator to request a meeting for the purposes of sex or to request child abuse material then that would be entrapment; if they simply play the role and respond without crossing that line that is OK.
Would any offence be committed for: Having this on your person? Buying or selling this? Leaving it around for people to plug in to a computer? In the abstract, I don't think that this conduct would violate either Section 36 of the U.K. law or U.S. law, although, obviously, purposefully destroying a computer itself (i.e. actually using the device without the consent of the owner of the computer) would violate many U.K. laws and would also violate many U.S. laws at both the state and federal level. I also don't think that possession or buying or selling this product would be a crime absent some intent that it be used illegally, in which case there might be an "attempt" to commit a crime offense, or an offense that would make one part of a conspiracy to commit a crime. In the "leaving it around" example, there is arguably an intent to use it to harm another improperly, although the phrasing is ambivalent. While many statutes in the U.S. criminalize possession of burglary tools, or drug paraphernalia, sometimes with an associated intent element (although even these crimes often have an express or judicially implied intent to use element), I'm not aware of any statute that criminalize possession of tools for malicious destruction of property. So, if the tools aren't possessed or used in a manner intended as a step in the facilitation of a crime, I don't think that any law is violated. So far as I know, the U.S. does not have a counterpart to Section 37 of the British statute cited above (it isn't a terribly easy thing to search for to definitively rule out the existence of such a law because federal law has many uncodified crimes in unexpected statutes and there are many sets of state criminal statutes, not all of which are codified either). The example giving in the comments by @gnasher729 of possession of a hammer which could be used to do the same things that this object could be used to do is instructive. Arguably, this USB-like tool is more specifically targeted at malicious conduct. But, for example, when I used to work as a radio news reporter, we had a machine that was basically a high powered magnet that was specifically designed to destroy all information on magnetic media. This was, in part, so that it could be reused, but it was also so that confidential interviews wouldn't fall into the wrong hands once they were no longer needed, in much the way that one might shred paper documents. It isn't so implausible to think that a device like this one might be necessary for individuals or firms with national defense secrets embedded in their hardware and software to have on hand in order to destroy a sensitive computer in order to prevent a security breach, if necessary. In a case like that, leaving one of these devices around the office unlabeled might be negligent, but wouldn't have the intent necessary to be an intended crime. And, it is hard to imagine that the device itself, which seems pretty simple, would itself involve any technology that is a national security secret, so it probably wouldn't violate export control laws. Of course, possession, purchase or sale of such a specialized device, or leaving it around unlabeled would certainly be powerful evidence of an intent to use the device in a wrongful manner, and hence, of an attempt to commit a crime. Indeed, possession of such a device or purchase of one might very well be sufficient to establish probable cause to seize the device and arrest the person holding it on charges of an attempt to destroy a computer. But, this device would be merely powerful evidence of an intent to commit a crime, rather than something that is a crime to commit in and of itself. There are no international laws that govern this kind of thing. The only international laws applicable to individuals pertain to war crimes and nuclear and chemical weapons. Even then, most international laws direct member nations to adopt domestic laws on the subject rather than being self-executing.
In colorado, it appears that the kidnapping statutes do not apply if the act is not &quot;knowing&quot; or if the perpetrator lacks intent. § 18-3-301 Any person who does any of the following acts with the intent thereby to force the victim or any other person to make any concession or give up anything of value in order to secure a release of a person under the offender's actual or apparent control commits first degree kidnapping: (a) Forcibly seizes and carries any person from one place to another; or (b) Entices or persuades any person to go from one place to another; or (c) Imprisons or forcibly secretes any person. § 18-3-302 Any person who knowingly seizes and carries any person from one place to another, without his consent and without lawful justification, commits second degree kidnapping. 2. Any person who takes, entices, or decoys away any child not his own under the age of eighteen years with intent to keep or conceal the child from his parent or guardian or with intent to sell, trade, or barter such child for consideration commits second degree kidnapping. § 18-3-303 Any person who knowingly confines or detains another without the other's consent and without proper legal authority commits false imprisonment. As @ohwilleke pointed out in this answer, this means that as soon as the hypothetical car thief becomes aware that the child is in the car and doesn't then act to return the child to their parents, it becomes second-degree kidnapping. (It's also possible that CO case law has interpreted the statutes differently than I'm interpreting them here, but the plain language seems to require the actual intent to take and/or confine a person illicitly.)
Defamation requires communication to a third-party I can say (or write) anything I want about a person directly to that person and, unless it is a threat, they have no recourse at all. I can call them a liar, a thief, a Nazi, or a goat fornicator. Of course, I have to be careful – calling them a “bastard” might be a slur on their mother communicated to a third-party (them) which would give her a right to sue although that would require a literal and largely archaic use of the term. That said, you do need to check with your lawyer if you can redact names in the face of a subpoena - complying with a legal obligations is a legitimate use of personal data under GDPR.
This would probably constitute illegal wiretapping and would certainly constitute a 4th Amendment search if conducted by law enforcement. Normally, the definition of whether something is "public" for purposes of an expectation of privacy is whether it could be detected by a human being unaided by technological enhancements from a place where someone could lawfully be to make that kind of observation. Some of the relevant cases are Katz v. U.S., 389 U.S. (1967) (tape recorder outside a public telephone booth was a search violating the expectation of privacy) and U.S. v. Karo, 468 U.S. (1984) (tracking device placed in barrel by authorities violated expectation of privacy). RFID signals are not "public" even if they are not encrypted with a private code because a device, such as the ones identified in the question, is necessary to receive them. The Wiretap Act, codified by 18 U.S. Code § 2511, is a federal law aimed at protecting privacy in communications with other persons. Typically, when you think of a "wiretap," the first thing that comes to mind is someone listening to your telephone calls. But the Act protects more than that. Under the Act, it is illegal to: intentionally or purposefully intercept, disclose, or use the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication through the use of a "device." The Act provides criminal and civil penalties for violations, although it creates various exceptions to when interceptions and disclosures are illegal. From here. In this circumstance, despite being passive, one is intentionally intercepting the contents of electronic communications through the use of a device. The fact that there was not in all cases an intent to communicate through, for example, an RFID chip, on a specific occasion probably does not suffice to render it not a communication.
This could be a violation of 18 USC 1030 (and a crime). A number of things go into requirements for conviction under this law. First, it has to be a computer, which is defined as an electronic, magnetic, optical, electrochemical, or other high speed data processing device performing logical, arithmetic, or storage functions, and includes any data storage facility or communications facility directly related to or operating in conjunction with such device, but such term does not include an automated typewriter or typesetter, a portable hand held calculator, or other similar device Any printer that I have encountered in the past 40 years counts as &quot;a computer&quot;. Second, (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—...(C) information from any protected computer; It is highly likely that the person printing has to receive some information from the printer, and respond accordingly so you have your &quot;obtains information&quot; element. Maybe not useful information, but information nevertheless. It also has to be a protected computer, (B) which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States Well, a computer connected to the internet is a protected computer, see US v. Trotter, 478 F.3d 918. Also, the access must be &quot;without authorization or exceeds authorized access&quot;. The law doesn't explain with &quot;without authorization&quot; means, but the latter is defined as to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter If the law were stated in terms of &quot;prohibited access&quot;, meaning &quot;express denial of permission&quot;, and if the computer owner had set the computer to &quot;prohibited access&quot; by default (password protected), there would be no issue -- accessing the computer is prohibited. &quot;Unauthorized&quot; can also mean &quot;has not been explicitly authorized&quot;, i.e. lacking any indication one way or the other. Every computer access is initially unauthorized, until authorization is granted; and re-trying a login after mis-typing a user name (and being denied access) is not a violation of this law. There does not appear to be case law that addresses the status of computers just left open to the public, and whether using a computer that is so exposed constitutes &quot;unauthorized access&quot;. Also, it is not clear that the defendant in this case has &quot;obtained information&quot;, since with printing, information flows into the computer. There is also a clause about recklessly causing damage, but I don't see what damage would result (&quot;damage&quot; is defined as &quot;any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information&quot;), and how printing would be &quot;reckless&quot;. It seems somewhat unlikely that this would be deemed to be a crime, though if you experiment, you could be on the cutting edge of new case law.
Surely such a well meaning albeit naive driver wouldn't stand a chance in court if they said that it's because they've a section 230-like protection. Because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act explicitly protects computer service providers from such charges. A driver is not a computer service provider, and the US legislature has never voted to offer similar protection to drivers picking up hitchhikers. You say that an email can easily be classified as fraudulent, but that's not true. Spam detection has gotten pretty sophisticated, but they still get plenty of false positives. They were a lot less sophisticated back in 1996 when the Communications Decency Act was passed.
Intent would greatly factor into the case. As mentioned, possession of child pornography is illegal. There was a case, where a man had inadvertently downloaded such images. In the case, it was shown that there was sufficient evidence that it was accidental and without his knowledge. Presumably, if you by happenstance created an identical code through encryption/compiling, there would be a lack of evidence of intent or evidence of your intended use. For example, your stored password manager file happens to store data identical to an illegal image. The password manager output is provable and repeatable to show that it was simply circumstantial. If you have hundreds of such outputs that all "just happen to be illicit images" you would probably fall on the wrong side of reasonable doubt. As to whether you can keep the data, the programmers for the password manager would probably update their system to modify the output to avoid bad press. The general idea is that the "illegal number" is so incredibly specific that accidental cases are very unlikely to occur, and if it did, that there would be forensic evidence indicating intent and use.