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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Tenants at a property in New York City just struck a deal in what is both a wildly reasonable ask but also a crucial precedent at a time of increasing surveillance—their landlord has to give them physical keys to their building.
Five tenants in Hell’s Kitchen sued their landlord in March after the owners installed a Latch smart lock on the building last year. It is unlocked with a smartphone, and reportedly granted tenants access to the lobby, elevator, and mail room. But the group that sued their landlords saw this keyless entry as harassment, an invasion of privacy, and simply inconvenient.
“We are relieved that something as simple as entering our home is not controlled by an internet surveillance system and that because we will now have a mechanical key they will not be tracking our friends and our family,” 67-year-old tenant Charlotte Pfahl, who has lived in the building for 45 years, told the New York Post.
Source: After Smart Lock Allegedly Traps Senior in Apartment, Tenants Sue for Physical Keys and Win
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:19PM
>The physical part of the lock is always the biggest weak point
Only the biggest weak point *of the lock*. And only if the software/electronic component is theoretically sound and flawlessly implemented. Which is difficult even for seasoned computer security experts, much less cut-rate lock, car, etc. manufacturers.
I remember looking into lock-picking at one point out of curiosity. One of the big takeaways was that lock-picking is generally the most difficult way to bypass security, useful primarily when you want to hide the fact that you have done so. Even an easily-picked mechanical lock is typically the most secure part of a door, and the door is usually the most secure part of the building. If you want to get into a locked room, it's usually far faster and easier to go through a window, ceiling, or wall than to go through the door. Or quite often you can even bypass the lock entirely to attack the latch directly, as in the old credit-card trick for a typical door latch.
If you really want to go through the door, and the latch is well enough protected that you have to attack the lock, then shooting or drilling it is far faster and easier than picking it. Even if picking it can be easily done in under a minute (as is the case for most locks).
The primary purpose of lock-picking is to open a lock without damaging anything - i.e. for covert entry that won't be noticed soon(if ever) for either criminal or pranking purposes, or to open a lock for someone who has locked their keys on the other side of it without doing any damage. For everyone else, just break things, it's easier.
And that's true whether the lock is purely mechanical, or electronically controlled. All electronics do is present different attack vectors - no different than the more creative pick-resistant mechanical locks out there with strange-looking keys or multistage mechanisms. Except that mechanical lockpicking often requires skill, while electronic lockpicking often just requires downloading the right software and pushing a button.
All of which is to say, the only real function of locks is to protect against crimes of temptation and opportunity - a.k.a. "they keep an honest man honest". Anyone skilled in infiltration is unlikely to be more than mildly inconvenienced unless the lock is more expensive than whatever it's protecting.