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Physical locks aren't very good. They keep the honest out, but any burglar worth his salt can pick the common door lock pretty quickly. It used to be that most people didn't know this. Sure, we all watched television criminals and private detectives pick locks with an ease only found on television and thought it realistic, but somehow we still held onto the belief that our own locks kept us safe from intruders. The Internet changed that. First was the MIT Guide to Lockpicking, written by the late Bob ("Ted the Tool") Baldwin. Then came Matt Blaze's 2003 paper on...

Today while in a small town (circa 1,500) in the Sandhills of Nebraska, when I turned off the automobile, the blade of the key snapped off, leaving me with just the top half in my hand. Okay, so I went around looking for a locksmith (as I am deaf, telephoning around does not work; when seeking information, I have to shoe-leather it).....and much to my surprise, this particular town had no locksmith. The alternative was 17 miles away. This really suprised me, because in some towns a tenth the size of this town, at least in Nebraska, there's always at...

PHILADELPHIA -- Police were investigating a shooting in South Philadelphia Thursday. An 18-year-old man was shot in the head on the 1500 block of Federal Street. He was listed in critical condition, officials said. Officials said the man was shot when he tried to rob a locksmith. The owner of the locksmith store shot the man, who was armed with a gun, officials said. Police said they recovered the gun from the scene.

Lock-picking enthusiasts are cracking the 'uncrackable' in increasingly creative ways. And locksmiths aren't happy about it. Patrick White reportsYou won't be kicked off a car lot for asking about horsepower or ousted from a bar for asking about booze. But apparently, you can be tossed from a locksmith shop for asking about locks.

Police in Germany had to call in a locksmith to break into jail when the lock on a cell broke, trapping a prisoner inside, authorities said on Wednesday. Police in the Bavarian town of Zwiesel, near the Czech border, locked up the 18-year-old at the police station after he was accused of smashing a car window during May day festivities on Tuesday. Officers planned to send the youth home the following morning, but could not open the door because of the broken lock. "We told him we'd get him out of there," said a spokesman for local police. "We said...