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I dunno, making an innocent-looking object do something dangerous is "not cool" for non-technical items as well.

Say you replace the contents of one of those bright-coloured sticky sweet liquors with a similarly-coloured cleaning fluid? Then leave it in your liquor cabinet, "to teach people to not touch your stuff". I'm not even sure that's legal.

I once heard a story of someone storing their concentrated GHB (a drug, clear liquid), in a vodka bottle. If someone had accidentally poured themselves a shot of that, the consequences would have been pretty bad.

On a similar note, I'm not sure about the US, but in the Netherlands, it's actually illegal to booby-trap your own home. If an intruder gets hurt, you're liable. I don't think this law exists to protect burglars, but instead it is to protect well-intentioned unlucky people from "accidents" caused by terrible and idiotic "security" measures.

Makes me think about the car-alarm in Snow Crash, which delivered a fatal several thousand volts to whoever tried to open it without a key (or maybe it was a flame-thrower, I forgot).




Re: "If an intruder gets hurt, you're liable."

IANAL

This is called the Castle doctrine, and in the US it varies on a state-by-state basis. I'm not sure if it would cover "booby-traps" or not, since technically you are protecting yourself from an intruder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine#Practice_in_th...


That does not cover booby traps, which are illegal everywhere in the US AFAIK.




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