Most locks, especially in residential use today can be drilled open in less than a minute and many can be picked or bump keyed just as fast. Why are these locks still sold? Are not these locks defective products and should not the lock industry be liable in civil court when they are compromised? Why don't ALL pin tumbler locks at a minimum incorporate hardened steel spool pins which would both thwart drilling and many picking attempts? Even SFIC core locks like most Best which are used commercially all over the place can be easily drilled including drilling the control locking lug which would allow decoding of not only operating keys but also control keys for the system. Why is this total lack of even the most basic security not addressed by the lock industry? Any answers? Anybody????
A piece of glass can be broken and allow entry to a location in one second. Should the glass industry be liable for this? People are shot and killed accidentally every day and the gun industry isn't being held accountable for this. Point is, just because cheap locks are sold, doesn't make the lock manufacturer liable for something done by someone breaking the law. I will agree that it is unfortunate the false sense of security that people feel when they put a Kwikset handle lock on the front door of their $500,000 house. It is the responsibility of the locksmith to let the customer know how much security they can expect from their particular hardware. I will never forget seeing a brand new sparkly Medeco lock installed on a door only to have the door kicked in and the building compromised. The lock worked great......but the door frame didn't. If anything, people need to become more responsible for their security. Home Alarms are a great way to back up the questionable deadbolt on the door. Motion lights.....so on and so forth. Anyone guarding something or somewhere extremely valuable should know they have to spend a lot more than usual to secure their property/location. And a loaded 12 gauge can also add some protection..... Yes, locks are basically just codes and any codes can be decoded or compromised. Anyone who becomes fluent with compromising locks should definitely put their skills to better uses. Like being a locksmith. It might not make as much as that big heist, but at least you won't end up up-state for 15 - 25 yrs.
"Tim Mathews" snipped-for-privacy@spamthis.net wrote in message news:%UVMg.9916$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
This analogy is poor. The purpose of most glass is not to keep people out, in fact we all know that if we want to keep people out we are better off with a solid wall than with windows. Consider instead bullet 'proof' glass that fails in practice to stop a projectile it is manufacturer rated to stop, in that instance the manufacturer and possibly the installer would almost certainly be held liable.
People are shot and killed
Again a poor analogy. The purpose of guns is to impart deadly force. An accidental shooting does not mean the product i.e. the gun was defective. Considering the intended purpose the more lethal the performance the better the product both with regard to gun and ammunition. The gun is only defective if it discharges under circumstances that it should not be able to discharge under i.e. with the safety on or without the trigger being pulled. Under those circumstances I certainly wouldn't want to be the manufacturer of the weapon in question. This analogy also ignores the fact that the gun industry is sued, sometimes successfully, with monotonous regularity where no safety defect is even present.
Point is, just because cheap locks are sold, doesn't make the lock
It arguably does when the product is so defective that it can be compromised in an unreasonably short amount of time. The intended purpose of locks is to keep people out. That is different from the intended purpose of the other two products you mentioned as examples.
I will
And this frequently doesn't happen.
I will
The lock worked
protection.....
This is all true but often the lock is the weakest link in the security chain. The lock industry could relatively easily fix this but for decades they have manufactured and sold the same blatantly insecure designs.
business takes advantage of ignorance to sell you cheap crap that supplies nothing but a false sense of confidence, and uses lobbying power to keep lawsuits out of the courts, or failing that, out of the news. the security industry does it, the tobacco industry does it, the handgun industry does it. heck, the hooked-on-phonetics industry does it. every industry does it.
the only solution to ignorance is education, and most people would rather be dragged by their tongues over broken glass than take the time and effort to educate themselves. thinking is hard, so why bother? the ad on the tv said all i have to do is just shell out some money and the problem will go away. or appear to go away anyway.
"the power of persuation" by robert levine is a very interesting book on how the advertising and marketing businesses know more about why you buy what you buy than you do. read it and be educated, or keep buying whatever shiny thing is dangled in front of you this week.
The answer is that this is what the market wants. You can certainly buy locks that are more resistant to being defeated, but the market does not support this.
A lot also depends on the threat level. In some places window bars and heavy duty locks mounted on reinforced doors are the norm, merchants roll metal shutters over their storefronts when they close up shop for the night.
Other places this does not seem to be a problem.
Are not these locks defective products and should
They are not marketed as pick proof nor drill proof so I would say that they are not defective.
It is addressed but seldom does it seem to be an issue with the market.
This sounds like blaming the customer. The industry ultimately has control over the quality of it's products. The industry can also set standards for itself and bring considerable pressure to bear on those within that don't comply. Also certainly we are not talking a huge per unit cost increase for simple improvments like spool/hardened steel upper pins. It would only take a couple per lock to make a major improvment.
compromised?
And how far do you carry this argument? How about a pin tumbler lock with 2 pin stacks? 1 pin stack? No pin stacks? I mean after all it would still be a lock to anyone who didn't know that it will turn with anything you stick in it. How little security does it have to provide before it is defective with regard to it's intended function as a lock? To me a lock should reasonably stand up to at least a moderate attempt to defeat it to be worthy of the name. If it picks open with amateur technique in 30 seconds that is a defective lock to me. Now if it takes 10 minutes and numerous attempts with good technique before it FINALLY yeilds then I would be inclined to say it provides decent protection against picking for a non-high security lock. Same with drilling. Anyone with even a casual knowledge of metalurgy knows perfetly well that any suitable drill bit will go through brass like hot butter so a brass lock with no anti drilling features that will drill in
30-60 seconds flat is not much of a lock to me and certainly at least borders on defective. Put one hardened steel driver in the first position and it will be 10 times harder at least. Ford did similar to this with at least some of their 5 pin ignition locks and it made shear line drilling them take a lot more time and effort. Compared to their 10 cut crack-a-matic these 5 pins were much better even factoring in that they could be picked fairly easily.
I really don't understand why the entire lock industry doesn't follow the lead of the safe industry and adopt a formal wide spread ratings system and have their locks UL listed. With a safe you at least have an idea what you are getting. safe ratings are based on expert attack which takes obscurity out of the equation because in testing the attacker has detailed knowledge of the safes construction. Most name brand safes are rated this way, few name brand locks are. Someone can always come along and figure out how to save a few minutes on the opening time but in general you are not going to be able to open a trtl30x6 rated safe in 5 minutes unless you use explosives or some method the safe isn't rated for because it just can't be done, and if someone does discover how to do it with the tools the rating covers the safe will be re-rated accordingly.
How often does the "market" i.e. the customer really know about all the different methods that can be used to compromise their locks until after it happens? Even with commercial customers who may be a little more security conscious than residential customers do you really sit down with them when they tell you they want an SFIC core system and say "OK but this one you want can be drilled with this jig here like this and the entire core removed, at which point the door is compromised and the core can be decoded to make keys to the rest of the system, if applicable". If you do I bet you are in the minority.
So if you walk into a shop and see padlocks that sell from $4 to $100 do you assume that the level of security on the $4 lock is the same as the $100 model?
Would you ask the locksmith or read the packaging?
The industry ultimately has control
Actually there are standards.
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Also UL has some standards also. (UL Std. 437 and perhaps others)
They cost more than the ones that do not meet the standards, but they are available.
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