Well, I meant more that, in contrast to an asymmetric keypair, you can't leave a criminal alone with a lock for as long as you please. With enough time to gathe

Well, I meant more that, in contrast to an asymmetric keypair, you can't leave a criminal alone with a lock for as long as you please. With enough time to gather information about a specific lock, someone can eventually use it to get a key - no amount of time with your public key will, at present, give you its private counterpart. The lock itself is not inherently secure in a way that having it won't compromise the key, so its security comes somewhat from the obscurity of the internals of each lock. It's not an exact metaphor, I admit, but it's relevant to the fears of OSS - people think leaving all your public information on the table is enough to compromise the system, because in a physical model, it effectively is.