 If you want to keep your bagels safe, make sure that you put decent locks on them. I've been interested in lockpicking ever since I first saw it in movies. It's one of those things that you see in spyflex that seems like it would be really cool to learn how to do, along with martial arts, stunt driving, and being unreasonably attractive. But, while it's really hard to get good enough at those other skills to impress somebody who doesn't know anything about them, you can learn how to pick a basic lock in a very short amount of time, and people's whole opinion of you will change. I mean, kind of. If you look at the sort of people who are really into lockpicking, it's pretty clear that many of them are huge nerds. There's a reason that nerds dig lockpicking, besides the cool mystique of spy movies. Locks are kind of like mechanical puzzles, which are pretty nerdy already, but they're also intimately linked with the power of information, and that's definitely a nerd thing. In a lock, there's a row of split vertical pins of differing heights, which prevent the lock from spinning. When you insert a key, there's a series of peaks and valleys on it, which correspond to the negative image of those split lines. If it's the right key, it'll add just the right amount of height to each one of the pins, so that the split lines line up with the split line of the lock. The pins aren't jamming anything anymore, so the lock spins and opens. The heights of those ledges on the key are quantized values, which you can represent with numbers. For example, if each pin in the lock is nine units tall, then you need the deepest possible value cut into the key, and it's called a 999 key. A series of numbers coded into physical objects, which will only respond if those numbers match up with each other, that's really cool, right? Well, cool. No wonder nerds love this stuff. Picking a lock involves using the specifics of the implementation of that idea, namely the manufacturing tolerances of the parts that are used to construct it against it. To begin, you simply use a tool to turn the lock slightly, so the pins bind a little bit inside. Then you push up on the most tightly bound pin with a different tool, until you feel the lock give way slightly, because that pin is in the correct position. Repeat for each one of the pins until the lock twists open. The moment that I opened my first lock with a pick, a little part of my picture of the world shattered. I was used to thinking of every door with a funny shaped slot on the front as being an impenetrable barrier of security, beyond which only the worthy might venture forth into those forbidden lands where in lie the janitor's implements. However, with about an hour of practice and some homemade tools, I was able to reliably pick a cheap lock, the same cheap lock that's on the door to more than half the apartments in the United States. That's when I first realized something. There really is no such thing as security. There is only deterrence. You might think that that's a little bit extreme. Okay, so don't buy such a cheap lock. But really, no security access device is impenetrable. Even underwriters laboratories, the quality assurance company which certifies everything from your microwave to paper towel dispensers, will only certify locks for the amount of time that they can be expected to keep someone busy. What most people think of as categorical security is really an arms race of probability, technology, and skill. There are more complicated and expensive locks with more mechanisms in place to prevent someone from picking them. And there are people who get really, really good at opening those locks. For their job, or for fun. There are also secondary security measures like dead bolts or chain locks or safes or guard docks. But they all boil down to trying to make it a little bit more of a hassle for someone who wants something than it's worth to them. Okay, so what? Should you be constantly paranoid that your security isn't good enough? Should you buy the most expensive locks that money can buy and put barbed wire around your front yard and get keypads and safes and ventilation ducts that are too small to crawl through? I mean, seriously, what's with that? Well, no, not really. The idea isn't to try and regain that sense of absolute security that never really existed in the first place. It's to recognize that security really is about trying to figure out exactly how much discouragement you need to keep something safe. Many criminologists feel as though the vast majority of crime may be attributed to opportunity, not desire. An open window and unlocked computer. Basically a situation which removes any significant deterrence towards simply walking in and taking something valuable, besides getting caught. If you start to think of security as a continuum of discouragement rather than a simple binary value of safe or not safe, you begin to realize that the particular implementation of security measures matters just as much as the measures themselves and that can help you make better decisions. If you've got a four-digit pin on your bank account, that's great. But does 1111 provide any real barrier of effort for somebody who wants access? If you've got a list of all of your online passwords in an unencrypted Word document on your laptop somewhere, how easy have you made it for somebody who steals your computer to ruin your life? That's my takeaway from learning about lockpicking. Security isn't an absolute. It's a matter of incremental discouragement. But if you make that discouragement difficult in the right ways, that's genuine safety. When's the last time that you changed your online passwords? Are you anxious to buy a lock at Home Depot, make some tools, and try your hand at lockpicking yourself? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share. And don't stop thunking.