>>937758>What if the program that steals info serves a completely legitimate purpose if plugged into OP's own machine?Neither criminal nor civil responsibility can be completely avoided simply because the ultimate motives were good or noble. If you steal someone's wallet you have still committed theft even if you intended (and actually do) donate the stolen money to charity. Your intent was still to commit a crime, regardless of the reasons for committing the crime.
In some circumstances, your ultimate good intentions or a decreased level of harm may influence a police officer not to arrest you or a DA not to charge you (or to charge you with a lesser offense) but that's a function of law enforcement or prosecutorial discretion. You're still guilty of having committed the greater offense, but the system allows for the government to show some degree of leniency.
>What if it says "please return if lost" or "please take to 'lost and found' if lost"If the program on the drive steals personal information, you're going to need a ironclad reason for having it on there regardless of the label you stick on the outside. Otherwise, your intent to steal will be inferred from the nature of the program itself. At a minimum, you are still the territory of civil and criminal negligence for failing to safekeep a dangerous program like that.
Imagine the analogous case of putting a stick of dynamite in the middle of a library. Regardless of what warning label you put on it, you're going to be criminally and civilly culpable because the potential harm outweighs any mitigating measure possible. Even if any normal person would run like hell (warning or no warning) you already broke the law as soon as you created the danger. Nothing that happens after that exculpates your responsibility. (Although in a civil case, intervening fault might mitigate damages, but that's a whole other topic.)
