I think we're mostly in agreement. The original scenario HenryBemis painted involved source code being leaked, so I think it's fair to either assume the employ

I think we're mostly in agreement. The original scenario HenryBemis painted involved source code being leaked, so I think it's fair to either assume the employee is technically competent, or should not have access to it in the first place. Also, their scenario involved disgruntled employees, so on the other end of the spectrum, if you have, say, sales representatives which want to take out their customer database, then it's well in their motivation spectrum to snap a few hundred smartphone pictures of Excel or Outlook with a pdf "scanning" app to get a nicely printable address book. Sure, it's not perfect, but it can still be damaging as hell. Basically: Don't rely on data exfiltration to fail. But the reason I've bothered to write the first comment, is that it's such a huge productivity drain to develop software on a locked down machine. I'll think twice or thrice before taking on a position where I don't have root access to my computer. I concur most non-technical employees don't need (or should have) more than the equivalent of a Chromebook.