Street cleaner bristles, a dremel, and piles upon piles of locks and picks. A small group of adults, mostly in their 20's, huddle around it tinkering. Every once in a while a latch clicks open and somebody is patted on the back.
"This," Dany says, showing us an unusual keyway, "is an older style lock. It just has a lever in the back and you just press the whole way to the back and rotate to open it, no tumblers at all. The rest of the stuff in there blocks the wrong keys, and is the sort of lock you build skeleton keys for."
A key for one of them, a dremel, and 10 minutes later and I'm holding a key with only two sets of bumps on the bottom. It opens all the locks of that style on the table.
Some of the newbies stand in mild disbelief. That's the most common reaction I get when holding this class: that this is only the sort of thing which happens in movies, or by extremely skilled people. The concept that I can teach a room full of people all the skills they would need to break into a hefty percentage homes in under two hours always comes as a bit of a shock.
"What's the easiest brand to pick?" Some of them fumble with their phones during the class to find a locksmith to call to upgrade their doors.
"Masterlock padlocks are normally the first thing you practice on. Next are kwikset and schlege...but a lot of it is personal preference"
"But those things are everywhere."
It is true. I have seen them on yard fences, electric equipment, government storage spaces, countless yard totes, virtually everywhere. People routinely trust in these products to secure their belongings, and yet most of the consumer-used security products blatantly do not offer much resistance to even a modestly trained individual.
"I am disappointed," he said, "I had always thought personal security was one of those markets which would sort itself out, with snake oil being readily exposed."
The taller girl from juggling class looks down over the edge of her glasses, "You do realize they're really just out to sell you peace of mind right?"
"But this is a really easy-to-test product and the free market right? Inferior products will lose out to superior ones via competition..."
"Like in what industries? What industries are governed by this law that the superior product can run an inferior one out of business? Can you name a time it has happened?"
We sat and thought for probably half an hour, and we couldn't think of any.
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