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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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Technology
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like I said,
in practice. on the daily.
you are trolling. I'm out.
Exactly!
Maybe you finally get it. The premise that altering the position of a switch is legally destruction of property is patently ridiculous. Altering the position of a 16x7 array of switches and calling it destruction of property is also ridiculous. So why is altering the position of an array of billions of tiny switches suddenly destruction of property?
lets demonstrate why. Because I would alter the structure of your atoms, and that would not be criminal, because why would it be. I would alter the structure in a very specific way, but that's not a crime.
On it's bacsic premise, no, you're allowed to move my arms or person (to the extent that it is not assault, kidnapping, etc) but say, altering the state of my atoms in a way that ends my life or does me physical harm is criminal.
So your point is not explicitly correct there, more detail is needed. You've also (either knowingly or unknowingly) built and argued against a strawman. My claim is that altering the position of a switch is not destruction of property, and that as the law as written explicitly criminalizes the destruction of property in response to a lawful search. Altering the position of a switch could be considered destruction of evidence, and by extension so would wiping the phone. I don't know if there is a law that explicitly bans the destruction of evidence during a lawful border search though. So it could still be criminal, but there is significant reasonable doubt that any property was actually destroyed.
see! there's nuance! not everything is a useless sea of light switches. there is no problem with squishing a grape, but there is a problem with causing similar physical harm to living beings
switches are like grapes. digital storage in your phone is like living beings. something that is not easy or possible to reproduce the same way it was before the damage.
No, digital storage in your phone is like ghosts playing a interdimenional clarinet when you look at the quantum tunneling aspects of an infinite universal wrap-up around rejected improbabilities of unstable bilateral states.