Comment by lmm
2 years ago
Feels like a very US-specific mentality. Back in the UK carrying lockpicking tools outside your home without good reason is "going equipped" and a crime in itself, and that's generally supported.
2 years ago
Feels like a very US-specific mentality. Back in the UK carrying lockpicking tools outside your home without good reason is "going equipped" and a crime in itself, and that's generally supported.
US lockpicking enthusiasts tend to know their states' laws (see e.g. https://www.toool.us/lockpicking-laws.php)
In general it's probably okay to bring your picks somewhere in most parts of the country if you're a hobbyist.
In general it's a bad idea to carry picks if you're doing anything that a prosecutor could construe as breaking into a building to steal things. This is an area to be particularly aware of for urban exploration, where trespassing is bad but burglary with burglarious tools is like felony bad.
UK is notoriously prohibitive of things that could be used in crimes; I mean, we're talking about a country where a screwdriver is potentially an "offensive weapon" if carried without a "legitimate purpose".
However, that is a fairly extreme case, and most countries don't have such laws on the books (or if they do, what's illegal is "possession with intent").
I don't have a formed opinion on available lockpicking kits other than if you make them contraband they will still be available in different ways and that measure will have the opposite effect.
But a lockpicking kit has one purpose, it's picking locks. A Flipper Zero type device has plenty of legitimate, legal, personal uses in an IoT equipped home.
The Flipper Zero being banned will lead to a flood of copies, not to mention black market OEM versions.
> if you make them contraband they will still be available in different ways and that measure will have the opposite effect.
Banning things doesn't make them impossible to get hold of but it does make it harder/more costly, which is all that any anti-crime measure can hope to achieve. Why do you say the opposite effect? This isn't like alcohol (or even, to an extent, weed) where a majority of ordinary decent people use it occasionally and want it to be available. Most people have never owned or used lockpicks and don't see any reason to have them if you're not a criminal. (And, sadly, that's probably also true of a flipper zero).
As long as we are talking about specific markets, I have a couple of stories.
In the United States, postal services have access to clusters of mailboxes and some common areas where mailman can leave mail and parcels, which can be entryways or some kind of storage rooms in them, for example, so that the owners can pick them up when they get home. These rooms are locked with padlocks made by several local companies. Once a key is inserted and turned in the lock, it can only be retrieved by turning it in the opposite direction to the default position, but even then they manage to forget them in the locks.
A customer from the USA came to us and asked us to combine this padlock with an intercom system we are developing to signal the administrator that the letter carrier came, opened/closed the lock or forgot the key in it. Nobody wants to switch to RFID, of course, or else the employees of the lock manufacturing company will have nothing to eat, so we had to enlarge the intercom vertically in order to build into it a lock whose transom will close a group of contacts on the panel, letting us know that something is going on. On the edge, lmao.
https://imgur.com/a/63GoaTB
In the UK, mailmen are treated very differently - the intercoms have a special button on the intercom which, when pressed, will open the door so that the mailman can enter and drop off the mail without having to carry keys or RFID identifiers. Normally this button is set for some working hours, for example from 9 to 5 and of course anyone can press it and get into the premises.