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Can anyone think of any ways where it would be possible to have the benefits the TSA was hoping for (cheap locks that can be opened by TSA and the owner but no

Can anyone think of any ways where it would be possible to have the benefits the TSA was hoping for (cheap locks that can be opened by TSA and the owner but no one else)? Because I can't seem to think of any.

x1798DE 10y ago
No, this is the same problem as key escrow.
halomru 10y ago
That depends on what you are trying to achieve with the locks? I think most cases where the lock would be actually useful could be covered with tamper-evident stickers. (You seal the zippers, TSA reseals with their own stickers)
Spooky23 10y ago
They prevent casual theft and tampering, and do so well. Everyone loves to bust on the TSA, but small controls can add up. If you live in a home without barred windows and a reinforced door and locks, anyone can enter your home in seconds. Yet we still lock our doors, and they are still effective. The only purpose of the TSA key is to facilitate searches without damaging the lock or bag. That's it.
- douche 10y ago
  My position on this has always been that, if somebody wants badly enough to steal my shit, they are going to. The only thing that locking doors is going to do is ensure that, not only is all of my shit stolen, but I have a kicked-in, busted, door to fix to boot.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    I grew up in a small town and felt the same way. But punks are savvy, and in some cases, which they are well aware of, criminal charges for stealing when a door is open are much less. So I lock my door, especially car doors, and I don't have problems anymore :)
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    I never really understood this position. Are you saying you don't lock anything? A vast majority of break-ins are thwarted by simply having a locked door and being home. You don't want to prevent even those? Security systems, chained doors, automatic lights and deadbolts are also a huge deterrent that prevent plenty of break-ins. Yes all of those combined will NOT stop someone who wants to get into your home really badly but at that point I can't imagine they want to simply steal something. That's a lot of effort to go through and would seem far more personal to me.
    - douche 10y ago
      My gun cabinet is the only thing that I lock. To be honest, I don't own anything very valuable, and I value my convenience more highly than the remote chance that somebody is going to clean out my house. Particularly since the criminal element is almost nonexistent hereabouts, and what there is tends to center on small-scale marijuana growing and dealing - although maybe that will become a problem if the heroin epidemic continues. Locking and unlocking a door two or three times a day adds up to a considerable amount of wasted time over the course of years. Not to mention insanity like I've seen in Germany, where people lock the outer gate, lock the outer door, deadbolt the door, lock the inner door, and then roll down huge armored shutters over the windows - in an upper-middle class gated community...
      - pavel_lishin 10y ago
        My parents don't lock their house doors or cars - but they live in a rural area, where the odds of a crime-of-opportunity are basically nil. Cruising house-to-house checking for unlocked cars and doors would take a prohibitive amount of time; easier to do that in suburbia, where you can cover a dozen houses on foot in five minutes. But in NYC, I've always locked my apartment door, because it's trivially simple to follow someone into an apartment building, and not much challenge to go door to door, listen for signs of habitation, and try the door handle.
      - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
        > Locking and unlocking a door two or three times a day adds up to a considerable amount of wasted time over the course of years Micro-optimizations are rarely useful in terms of software development or in real life (unless you're at considerable scale which is statistically unlikely in both cases). Granted I can't know for sure how long it takes you to lock or unlock a door. Going from my own experience locking and unlocking a door, combined, takes about 1-4 seconds depending on if I'm entering or leaving. So let's take the most (4 seconds). Let's say I unlock and lock 3 times a day (a busy day but again taking the highest numbers here). So that's 4,380 seconds (73 minutes) used per year at the maximum time. So yes it adds up but saving the 12 seconds per day wouldn't make me more productive that day (it's not like you gain that 73 minutes in a useful chunk of time) and statistically keeps myself, my family and our stuff safer. So yeah I get the convenience factor but I don't get the whole "wasted time" piece. Certainly depending on where you live it may be unnecessary but another thing to keep in mind is there are always times for firsts (so just because your area may be historically crime free doesn't mean it'll stay that way). Perhaps I'm just too paranoid but something so small seems fine to me :)
  - rlpb 10y ago
    Most people who steal stuff aren't that bothered about stealing your stuff, just someone's stuff. If you have better security that inconveniences a thief more than others, the thief will just go next door. If everyone raises the bar a little, determined thieves may continue but some number of casual thieves will find something else to do instead.
- awqrre 10y ago
  You would think that a locked suitcase would make it a more appealing target...
eru 10y ago
If you are talking about more general key escrow for cryptography: Use Shamir's secret sharing strategy (or similar) to share your private key with 500 other people, cooperation of an 400 people necessary to retrieve the secret. This way law enforcement can look at your stuff with a warrant ('nothing to hide' after all) but not in secret: they will have to contact a few hundred people, that's hard to keep hush-hush.

x1798DE 10y ago

No, this is the same problem as key escrow.

halomru 10y ago

That depends on what you are trying to achieve with the locks? I think most cases where the lock would be actually useful could be covered with tamper-evident stickers. (You seal the zippers, TSA reseals with their own stickers)

Spooky23 10y ago

They prevent casual theft and tampering, and do so well. Everyone loves to bust on the TSA, but small controls can add up. If you live in a home without barred windows and a reinforced door and locks, anyone can enter your home in seconds. Yet we still lock our doors, and they are still effective. The only purpose of the TSA key is to facilitate searches without damaging the lock or bag. That's it.

douche 10y ago
My position on this has always been that, if somebody wants badly enough to steal my shit, they are going to. The only thing that locking doors is going to do is ensure that, not only is all of my shit stolen, but I have a kicked-in, busted, door to fix to boot.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  I grew up in a small town and felt the same way. But punks are savvy, and in some cases, which they are well aware of, criminal charges for stealing when a door is open are much less. So I lock my door, especially car doors, and I don't have problems anymore :)
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  I never really understood this position. Are you saying you don't lock anything? A vast majority of break-ins are thwarted by simply having a locked door and being home. You don't want to prevent even those? Security systems, chained doors, automatic lights and deadbolts are also a huge deterrent that prevent plenty of break-ins. Yes all of those combined will NOT stop someone who wants to get into your home really badly but at that point I can't imagine they want to simply steal something. That's a lot of effort to go through and would seem far more personal to me.
  - douche 10y ago
    My gun cabinet is the only thing that I lock. To be honest, I don't own anything very valuable, and I value my convenience more highly than the remote chance that somebody is going to clean out my house. Particularly since the criminal element is almost nonexistent hereabouts, and what there is tends to center on small-scale marijuana growing and dealing - although maybe that will become a problem if the heroin epidemic continues. Locking and unlocking a door two or three times a day adds up to a considerable amount of wasted time over the course of years. Not to mention insanity like I've seen in Germany, where people lock the outer gate, lock the outer door, deadbolt the door, lock the inner door, and then roll down huge armored shutters over the windows - in an upper-middle class gated community...
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      My parents don't lock their house doors or cars - but they live in a rural area, where the odds of a crime-of-opportunity are basically nil. Cruising house-to-house checking for unlocked cars and doors would take a prohibitive amount of time; easier to do that in suburbia, where you can cover a dozen houses on foot in five minutes. But in NYC, I've always locked my apartment door, because it's trivially simple to follow someone into an apartment building, and not much challenge to go door to door, listen for signs of habitation, and try the door handle.
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      > Locking and unlocking a door two or three times a day adds up to a considerable amount of wasted time over the course of years Micro-optimizations are rarely useful in terms of software development or in real life (unless you're at considerable scale which is statistically unlikely in both cases). Granted I can't know for sure how long it takes you to lock or unlock a door. Going from my own experience locking and unlocking a door, combined, takes about 1-4 seconds depending on if I'm entering or leaving. So let's take the most (4 seconds). Let's say I unlock and lock 3 times a day (a busy day but again taking the highest numbers here). So that's 4,380 seconds (73 minutes) used per year at the maximum time. So yes it adds up but saving the 12 seconds per day wouldn't make me more productive that day (it's not like you gain that 73 minutes in a useful chunk of time) and statistically keeps myself, my family and our stuff safer. So yeah I get the convenience factor but I don't get the whole "wasted time" piece. Certainly depending on where you live it may be unnecessary but another thing to keep in mind is there are always times for firsts (so just because your area may be historically crime free doesn't mean it'll stay that way). Perhaps I'm just too paranoid but something so small seems fine to me :)
- rlpb 10y ago
  Most people who steal stuff aren't that bothered about stealing your stuff, just someone's stuff. If you have better security that inconveniences a thief more than others, the thief will just go next door. If everyone raises the bar a little, determined thieves may continue but some number of casual thieves will find something else to do instead.
awqrre 10y ago
You would think that a locked suitcase would make it a more appealing target...

eru 10y ago

If you are talking about more general key escrow for cryptography: Use Shamir's secret sharing strategy (or similar) to share your private key with 500 other people, cooperation of an 400 people necessary to retrieve the secret. This way law enforcement can look at your stuff with a warrant ('nothing to hide' after all) but not in secret: they will have to contact a few hundred people, that's hard to keep hush-hush.