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Geeky Stories about Hotel Security and Lock Picking by the Master

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avatar Geeky Stories about Hotel Security and Lock Picking by the Master
June 01, 2009 04:44PM
I post this only to provide some guidance to those travellers who stay in hotel/motels or are interested in security on the road.

Wired Magazine has couple stories on Marc Tobias, historic lock-picker and interesting (dated) story on how hotel card keys work. Convinces me to use the old fashion locks on hotel doors.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-06/ff_keymaster_showa

....For generations, hotels had suffered from the problem of lost or stolen room keys. Replacing the keys not only cost hotels money and time, but also opened them up to all sorts of liability — at any given moment, they had no idea how many people out there had keys to the rooms of their sleeping guests. Unless they replaced each lock after each guest, a hotel could be on the hook for hundreds of potential home invasions.
The Showa credit card-style keys solved the key-loss problem. Unlike physical keys, they were programmable and reprogrammable — and inscrutable, too, because you couldn't just take them to a hardware store and make a copy. Then this lockpicker confronted the challenge......


Story on Marc Tobias and high security lock cylinders (the heart of all keyed door locks, deadbolt or not):
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-06/ff_keymaster?currentPage=all



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