If I steal your secure token and log into you through a cloned browser session and access your gmail have I compromised your gmail? It feels like it.
Maybe it is just a distinction without a difference.
The access is transient and you remain in ownership over the credentials and account, because the credentials were not compromised (just the programs/browsers with pre-existing auth). Though with physical access it's probably only a mater of time before local admin passwords are brute forced and access to keychain/browser saved logins is inevitable?
> If I steal your secure token
It's more like you just logged in using your secure token then someone stole the device and took advantage of that. I think we can all agree there's a difference between having access to the laptop and access to the account without the laptop.
There is a difference, but that difference is not the one you seem to be implying. An account can be compromised even it it hasn't been fully and permanently taken over. The temporariness of an account being compromised does not mean the account was not compromised.
You can make a distinction and clarify that the account was compromised but that the account credentials were not. However if you extend that to saying that the account was not compromised when attackers did have temporary access, then you are simply lying.
1. some kind of remote access to the support engineer's session on that laptop
2. physical access, no login
3. physical access as a different user
4. physical access, logged in as the support engineer
If I have access to your laptop, logged in as you, and you have Gmail open in a browser, then your Gmail account should be considered compromised. (e.g. I could set up a forwarding address in your Gmail settings, set up a POP/IMAP password, steal your session/remember me cookies, install some dodgy software which makes sure I have remote access to your laptop in the future, etc..).