If you are 100% not able to make a connection between your Deck and GOD, then GOD cannot develop an overwatch score on you.
You can hack an offline device while still having a matrix persona with matrix attributes that is connected to a Grid and the matrix as a whole. It is described on p. 232 Direct Connections.
What you are suggesting is that you may also disconnect your cyberdeck (and with it your persona) from the grids and the matrix as a whole and still be allowed to use matrix actions (without building overwatch score).
I can think of at least a few quotes that contradict that statement.
SR5 p. 237 Matrix Actions
Matrix actions are only available in the Matrix.SR5 p. 231 Overwatch Score and Convergence
...the best hackers in the world can’t hack the Matrix without leaving tiny clues to their passing. GOD and the demiGODs are on the lookout for these kinds of clues...Not to mention every example I looked at in both core and DT (with reservation that I don't have Kill Code yet) where a decker establish a direct connection to a device is done while the decker have access to a grid and the matrix as a whole where it also generates overwatch score.... I can't find any example with an offline decker hacking anything.
I am sure there are more. I just cba to search for them right now :-)
This may not be literally supported by the strictest interpretation of RAW, but if it's confusing and folks are not applying this logic to the activity, then maybe errata needs to be introduced.
I guess we'll know if that's the case when this explodes into 15 pages of nerdbickering.
Snicker :-)
All I found was people echoing the statement without a direct link to the original.
Unfortunately this was not discussed in the FAQ thread (which is still pinned and easy to find even though it have a lot of pages...).
Instead it was in the form of a reply from Aaron in a thread about stealing a car in the world of Shadowrun. The topic might not even been in the rules section of the forum (I am thinking General?). The year was 2013 or so.
He basically said something like "and before you ask, yes, you have to be online during the extended test" (but the exact wording eludes me which make it hard to search).
Doesn't really matter since it was then later clarified in Data Trails.
DT p. 169 Ownership
Changing ownership legally takes roughly a minute, while changing it illegally requires an extended Hardware + Logic [Mental] (24, 1 hour) Test (see p. 237, SR5 for more details). Performing this test requires access to the Matrix.I was going to quibble with you, based on files "on a commlink" are never presumed to actually have the 1s and 0s stored anywhere physically ON the commlink...
While I am sure the world of SR5 also let you store stuff in the matrix (great for all you device less Technomancers out there) I can at least think a couple quotes that prove that your commlink (or deck) have non-cloud-based storage space you may utilize to store things on.
SR5 p. 223 Life with a commlink
So where do you store all of the things you want to keep? Pictures from your Aunt Edna’s wedding, credit information, your SIN, every book and movie you’ve bought, all the programs you might want to run—all of it fits on your commlink (or cyberdeck if you prefer). In fact, every device on the Matrix has a massive amount of storage space, unthinkable amounts by early 21st century standards. Your gamemaster might decide that a device is too small or low-grade or a file so massively large that a problem comes up, but such problems are extremely rare. Even if it does, the entire world is wireless, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding an alternate storage location.SR5 p. 228 Reconfiguring your deck
When you reconfigure your deck, you can either switch two of your deck’s Matrix attributes, or swap a running program with a program you have stored on your deck that is not running.SR5 p. 242 Snoop
You can listen to, view, or read this data live, or you can save it for later playback/viewing if you have something to store it on (your deck will do).SR5 p. 250-251 Living Persona
Since your living persona is just a persona, not a device, you don’t have any onboard storage; this is easy enough to deal with because you can store files in nearby devices.