Article on CNET

[prag]

squelchtone wrote

Thank you for sharing the examples with us. You have some good ideas which should definately implemented.

I just noticed where you were from and I'm glad you found your way to this forum. I know that before the internet such far reaching communications would be irregular if not entirely impossible. I'm glad to see users from all over the planet meeting up here and talking about the locksport and locksmith situtation in their countries and continents.

This forum is a wealth of information. I have learnt allot from the experiences of other locksmiths. You are correct in saying that before the internet this would have been near impossible. Imagine relying on snail mail.

There a running joke here that in our country we are usually 5 years behind with technology. So this forum can help me fill the gap.

[globallockytoo]

Hey Prag,

Do you know Anthony Rombaugh, Northern suburbs locksmith?

[wizardofoz]

CNET are rather behind the times....byabout 150 years!

The issue of full disclosure was first raised in the context of locksmithing, in a 19th century controversy regarding whether weaknesses in lock systems should be kept secret in the locksmithing community, or revealed to the public.

According to A. C. Hobbs:

A commercial, and in some respects a social doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lock-picking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock, let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker, is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is to the interest of honest persons to know this fact, because the dishonest are tolerably certain to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of the knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too earnestly urged that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties. Some time ago, when the reading public was alarmed at being told how London milk is adulterated, timid persons deprecated the exposure, on the plea that it would give instructions in the art of adulterating milk; a vain fear, milkmen knew all about it before, whether they practiced it or not; and the exposure only taught purchasers the necessity of a little scrutiny and caution, leaving them to obey this necessity or not, as they pleased.

-- From A. C. Hobbs (Charles Tomlinson, ed.), Locks and Safes: The Construction of Locks. Published by Virtue & Co., London, 1853 (revised 1868).