5 ms·

Cool idea but I'm not buying the justification. There are many cases where the correct response to "but law enforcement needs a way in" is "we have a system fo

by MarkusQ 9mo ago

Cool idea but I'm not buying the justification. There are many cases where the correct response to "but law enforcement needs a way in" is "we have a system for that, it's called a warrant." Further, while standing somewhere for five minutes may be obvious in some situations, there are many cases in which it wouldn't be obvious at all, or the response time would be great enough that this could still be quite useful to bad guys. Finally, "security through counting on slow hardware" is probably even worse than security through obscurity.

phantom784 9mo ago
I don't see how this would bypass the need for a warrant. It'd allow for picking the lock rather than breaking it when you _do_ have a warrant (and whoever has the key isn't available or isn't cooperating).
- dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
  I have seen cops use lockpicking guns while serving warrants. I would much rather them do that then break the door down. Hopefully projects like this can make this better. Even though it’s cool enough on its own to exist just because Even if the person is stone guilty I don’t think the police should be willy nilly destroying property in the process of serving a warrant. I know much of the focus is rightly on increasing accountability for the damage done to humans, but I always cringe at the thought of how much damage they can cause while performing a search. Imagine if your kid, or roommate had a warrant and they came in, smashed all your drywall and left you with the bill.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    > I would much rather them do that then break the door down The fact that law enforcement isn't responsible for damages during a search is problematic. When it's done somewhere when they've screwed up the address is even worse. "oops, sorry" should not be enough.
    - dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
      Especially with body cameras becoming ubiquitous, it should be easy enough to distinguish between necessary and excessive damage.
      - ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago
        And once the distinction is made?
        dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
        pay people who are victims of excessive damage, and punish the people responsible.
        ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago
        Ah, that leaves us where we are now: able to recognize excessive force and excessive damage, but lacking the ability to punish the people responsible, who also decide not to pay victims anything.
    - chuckadams 9mo ago
      > The fact that law enforcement isn't responsible ... is problematic FTFY
showerst 9mo ago
I don't think even the non-3d printed commercial ones are for law enforcement purposes. Besides being for fun, the main draw seems to be that it picks the lock _and_ gives you the bitting. So if you lose all your keys, your locksmith is now in and can easily remake keys without swapping out the lock core. There may be cases were it's (much) cheaper to pay a locksmith to stand there for ten minutes and spend a few minutes at a key machine, rather than pick a lock in 30 seconds and spend 10 minutes installing a $100 high end lock cylinder.
jabroni_salad 9mo ago
I can kinda buy the justification but I dont think the solution will get adoption. The TSA will cut the TSA-compliant locks if it will take the agent longer to find the key than it will to find the cutter. Or at least that's what the airline employee told me when I asked why my compliant lock had been removed. Law enforcement are not going to settle for a 5 minute skeleton key.
observationist 9mo ago
Locks are not security, in the sense that you're using. A sledgehammer goes right through 90% of them, or the hasps or latches secured by them. A competent lockpicking enthusiast will take two or three minutes to go through almost any of them. Someone motivated to get in with foreknowledge of the lock type can simply use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away, then 3d print all the keys on the ring and walk right in. Law enforcement can use pick guns, which will open a large majority of door locks, if they don't want to just use a battering ram for some reason. There are a ton of legitimate reasons to use lock picks, though - being able to use a pair of paperclips, or office supplies, can get you into network cabinets in a pinch, or if you lock your keys in your house or car and have a pick kit in your wallet. If a friend has an emergency and they know you can do it, it can save locksmith fees. Kids can lose keys in astonishing ways. And the hobby is fun - it's manual dexterity, skill, obscure technical knowledge, and you gain an appreciation for all the lockpicking content out there, and get to see the brazen plot devices when movies portray lockpicking in ridiculous ways. There are engineering attempts at creating unpickable locks with some awesome youtube videos, with engineering geeks creating elaborate locks and shipping them to the lockpickinglawyer or other content creators. It's also important from an educational standpoint. Knowing how secure you are is important, because assumptions can lead to tragic results. If you have a glass door, it doesn't matter if you've got a million dollar unpickable lock. If you know how trivial it is to open most padlocks, and what form factors of locks are most susceptible, you can make better decisions about securing storage units, trailers, outdoor gates, bikes, and so forth. A device like this is a novelty, not a serious security threat, and I'd argue the threshold for building it exceeds the threshold for which there are a thousand other trivially accessible ways of bypassing a given lock. There are tools similar to this device in spirit, in which you set pins for a key type manually with the key inserted, and with a little practice, will get you through a door in under a minute. Start here and enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ
- Edman274 9mo ago
  The thing about a sledgehammer is that if you're asleep in your house, you, your dog, your SO, or your neighbors might be startled awake by the sound of metal splitting and cracking open. Your security system might be designed to alert on something like a window being smashed. The person attempting to enter the house may be trying to enter undetected, because they know that a broken lock and/or a replaced lock will alert the people they're trying to ambush or steal from. Imagine something like industrial espionage, where a person breaks in undetected, steals an item, and then leaves. The occupant only realizes the item is gone a week later, and wonders if they could've misplaced it. In your scenario, they'd see the sledgehammered lock and immediately call the cops. I see comments like these all the time on Reddit and Hackernews. Hackers are like, "locks aren't security, a sledgehammer breaks them" and it appears to betray a mental threat model of "what if the cops want my thing" and never "what if someone wishes to do me harm while I am in my house" or "what if a criminal wants to not get caught taking my things" or "what if someone wants to lie in wait in my house", which are not risks to these commenters. They are to a lot of people though.
JKCalhoun 9mo ago
Given that the locks are so pickable anyway (any causal perusal of YouTube will reveal as much) I think lock picking is something of a community service to let people know that locks are, and probably have always been, to keep honest people honest.
- tialaramex 9mo ago
  They also allow you to distinguish legitimate operations. Maybe that armed guard isn't sophisticated enough to realise that your ID is fake, but they do know that you're supposed to use a key to open these lock, you were not supposed to turn up and smash one open -- which means that maybe you're not who you say you are after all and best you stay right there while they call somebody. Easy picks can mess with that. If I can open this with my tools in two shakes of a lamb's tail because the tolerances are far too big probably that guard doesn't notice, whereas if I'm there heaving and grimacing for ten minutes, or I need a sledgehammer or an angle grinder, they'd have to be completely moronic not to realise I'm not on the up-and-up.
cush 9mo ago
The creator doesn’t mention anything about helping law enforcement. They mention cheap off-the-shelf tools that could do a better and faster job than this robot. There are many reasons pick locks, including it being a hobby.
raincole 9mo ago
> security through counting on slow hardware Security through locks doesn't work in the first place. At least not locks that can be picked by this robot. Pick gun is a thing.
- petsfed 9mo ago
  Eh, its more that any one security tactic will almost certainly not cover the entire threat space. Locks are very good at discouraging honest people and lazy, opportunistic people. They are not very good at discouraging generally skilled and motivated people, or people who are specifically interested in what's behind a specific door. Locks are no obstacle if the intruder is willing to use social engineering. But if all they're trying to do is get into my garden shed, they're going to have to manipulate me or my spouse. Or somehow get past my dog. Meanwhile, my dog has absolutely no bearing on a bad actor getting access to my bank account. But similarly, bringing the full might of the best electronic security to bear to protect a chainsaw and a rake seems a bit excessive. And sort of beside the point, since I've not built my garden shed to withstand creation of an additional door (by e.g. a sawzall or a fireaxe).
  - quickthrowman 9mo ago
    > But if all they're trying to do is get into my garden shed, they're going to have to manipulate me or my spouse. You can cut virtually any padlock with a battery powered angle grinder or battery powered hydraulic bolt/rebar cutters in under 30 seconds, there’s hundreds of YouTube videos that demonstrate it if you want to see for yourself. Lithium-ion battery powered tools changed the game. Locks do not provide real physical security, they just keep honest and lazy people out.
    - petsfed 9mo ago
      > Locks do not provide real physical security, they just keep honest and lazy people out. Really?! I had no idea! I had such a miniscule understanding of what portion of the threat space locks address that the second sentence in the very fucking post you're replying is this: > Locks are very good at discouraging honest people and lazy, opportunistic people. I'm so ignorant of the threat space, that the sentence immediately following that one goes: > They are not very good at discouraging generally skilled and motivated people, or people who are specifically interested in what's behind a specific door. I guess you're right, the two sentences I wrote 76 characters before the one you're shitting all over as evidence of my ignorance have absolutely no bearing on the context of the statement I made. They just exist entirely disconnected from any other sentences in that same post. I bow to your superior intellect and analytical skills.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

by MarkusQ 9mo ago

phantom784 9mo ago

I don't see how this would bypass the need for a warrant. It'd allow for picking the lock rather than breaking it when you _do_ have a warrant (and whoever has the key isn't available or isn't cooperating).

dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
I have seen cops use lockpicking guns while serving warrants. I would much rather them do that then break the door down. Hopefully projects like this can make this better. Even though it’s cool enough on its own to exist just because Even if the person is stone guilty I don’t think the police should be willy nilly destroying property in the process of serving a warrant. I know much of the focus is rightly on increasing accountability for the damage done to humans, but I always cringe at the thought of how much damage they can cause while performing a search. Imagine if your kid, or roommate had a warrant and they came in, smashed all your drywall and left you with the bill.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  > I would much rather them do that then break the door down The fact that law enforcement isn't responsible for damages during a search is problematic. When it's done somewhere when they've screwed up the address is even worse. "oops, sorry" should not be enough.
  - dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
    Especially with body cameras becoming ubiquitous, it should be easy enough to distinguish between necessary and excessive damage.
    - ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago
      And once the distinction is made?
      - dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
        pay people who are victims of excessive damage, and punish the people responsible.
        ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago
        Ah, that leaves us where we are now: able to recognize excessive force and excessive damage, but lacking the ability to punish the people responsible, who also decide not to pay victims anything.
  - chuckadams 9mo ago
    > The fact that law enforcement isn't responsible ... is problematic FTFY

showerst 9mo ago

I don't think even the non-3d printed commercial ones are for law enforcement purposes. Besides being for fun, the main draw seems to be that it picks the lock _and_ gives you the bitting. So if you lose all your keys, your locksmith is now in and can easily remake keys without swapping out the lock core. There may be cases were it's (much) cheaper to pay a locksmith to stand there for ten minutes and spend a few minutes at a key machine, rather than pick a lock in 30 seconds and spend 10 minutes installing a $100 high end lock cylinder.

jabroni_salad 9mo ago

I can kinda buy the justification but I dont think the solution will get adoption. The TSA will cut the TSA-compliant locks if it will take the agent longer to find the key than it will to find the cutter. Or at least that's what the airline employee told me when I asked why my compliant lock had been removed. Law enforcement are not going to settle for a 5 minute skeleton key.

observationist 9mo ago

Locks are not security, in the sense that you're using. A sledgehammer goes right through 90% of them, or the hasps or latches secured by them. A competent lockpicking enthusiast will take two or three minutes to go through almost any of them. Someone motivated to get in with foreknowledge of the lock type can simply use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away, then 3d print all the keys on the ring and walk right in. Law enforcement can use pick guns, which will open a large majority of door locks, if they don't want to just use a battering ram for some reason. There are a ton of legitimate reasons to use lock picks, though - being able to use a pair of paperclips, or office supplies, can get you into network cabinets in a pinch, or if you lock your keys in your house or car and have a pick kit in your wallet. If a friend has an emergency and they know you can do it, it can save locksmith fees. Kids can lose keys in astonishing ways. And the hobby is fun - it's manual dexterity, skill, obscure technical knowledge, and you gain an appreciation for all the lockpicking content out there, and get to see the brazen plot devices when movies portray lockpicking in ridiculous ways. There are engineering attempts at creating unpickable locks with some awesome youtube videos, with engineering geeks creating elaborate locks and shipping them to the lockpickinglawyer or other content creators. It's also important from an educational standpoint. Knowing how secure you are is important, because assumptions can lead to tragic results. If you have a glass door, it doesn't matter if you've got a million dollar unpickable lock. If you know how trivial it is to open most padlocks, and what form factors of locks are most susceptible, you can make better decisions about securing storage units, trailers, outdoor gates, bikes, and so forth. A device like this is a novelty, not a serious security threat, and I'd argue the threshold for building it exceeds the threshold for which there are a thousand other trivially accessible ways of bypassing a given lock. There are tools similar to this device in spirit, in which you set pins for a key type manually with the key inserted, and with a little practice, will get you through a door in under a minute. Start here and enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ

Edman274 9mo ago
The thing about a sledgehammer is that if you're asleep in your house, you, your dog, your SO, or your neighbors might be startled awake by the sound of metal splitting and cracking open. Your security system might be designed to alert on something like a window being smashed. The person attempting to enter the house may be trying to enter undetected, because they know that a broken lock and/or a replaced lock will alert the people they're trying to ambush or steal from. Imagine something like industrial espionage, where a person breaks in undetected, steals an item, and then leaves. The occupant only realizes the item is gone a week later, and wonders if they could've misplaced it. In your scenario, they'd see the sledgehammered lock and immediately call the cops. I see comments like these all the time on Reddit and Hackernews. Hackers are like, "locks aren't security, a sledgehammer breaks them" and it appears to betray a mental threat model of "what if the cops want my thing" and never "what if someone wishes to do me harm while I am in my house" or "what if a criminal wants to not get caught taking my things" or "what if someone wants to lie in wait in my house", which are not risks to these commenters. They are to a lot of people though.

JKCalhoun 9mo ago

Given that the locks are so pickable anyway (any causal perusal of YouTube will reveal as much) I think lock picking is something of a community service to let people know that locks are, and probably have always been, to keep honest people honest.

tialaramex 9mo ago
They also allow you to distinguish legitimate operations. Maybe that armed guard isn't sophisticated enough to realise that your ID is fake, but they do know that you're supposed to use a key to open these lock, you were not supposed to turn up and smash one open -- which means that maybe you're not who you say you are after all and best you stay right there while they call somebody. Easy picks can mess with that. If I can open this with my tools in two shakes of a lamb's tail because the tolerances are far too big probably that guard doesn't notice, whereas if I'm there heaving and grimacing for ten minutes, or I need a sledgehammer or an angle grinder, they'd have to be completely moronic not to realise I'm not on the up-and-up.

cush 9mo ago

The creator doesn’t mention anything about helping law enforcement. They mention cheap off-the-shelf tools that could do a better and faster job than this robot. There are many reasons pick locks, including it being a hobby.

raincole 9mo ago

> security through counting on slow hardware Security through locks doesn't work in the first place. At least not locks that can be picked by this robot. Pick gun is a thing.

petsfed 9mo ago
Eh, its more that any one security tactic will almost certainly not cover the entire threat space. Locks are very good at discouraging honest people and lazy, opportunistic people. They are not very good at discouraging generally skilled and motivated people, or people who are specifically interested in what's behind a specific door. Locks are no obstacle if the intruder is willing to use social engineering. But if all they're trying to do is get into my garden shed, they're going to have to manipulate me or my spouse. Or somehow get past my dog. Meanwhile, my dog has absolutely no bearing on a bad actor getting access to my bank account. But similarly, bringing the full might of the best electronic security to bear to protect a chainsaw and a rake seems a bit excessive. And sort of beside the point, since I've not built my garden shed to withstand creation of an additional door (by e.g. a sawzall or a fireaxe).
- quickthrowman 9mo ago
  > But if all they're trying to do is get into my garden shed, they're going to have to manipulate me or my spouse. You can cut virtually any padlock with a battery powered angle grinder or battery powered hydraulic bolt/rebar cutters in under 30 seconds, there’s hundreds of YouTube videos that demonstrate it if you want to see for yourself. Lithium-ion battery powered tools changed the game. Locks do not provide real physical security, they just keep honest and lazy people out.
  - petsfed 9mo ago
    > Locks do not provide real physical security, they just keep honest and lazy people out. Really?! I had no idea! I had such a miniscule understanding of what portion of the threat space locks address that the second sentence in the very fucking post you're replying is this: > Locks are very good at discouraging honest people and lazy, opportunistic people. I'm so ignorant of the threat space, that the sentence immediately following that one goes: > They are not very good at discouraging generally skilled and motivated people, or people who are specifically interested in what's behind a specific door. I guess you're right, the two sentences I wrote 76 characters before the one you're shitting all over as evidence of my ignorance have absolutely no bearing on the context of the statement I made. They just exist entirely disconnected from any other sentences in that same post. I bow to your superior intellect and analytical skills.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]