[170] BKS Janus first time picked on camera 

Hi David - that's a valid question and it deserves a thoughtful answer. The explanation is that the hobby picking community (and these days most, but by no means all) of the modern security industry is pretty much unanimous in rejecting the old "Security by Obscurity" way of thinking. These videos are the natural outcome of that. Security by obscurity means that you very carefully avoid any discussion of the faults and weaknesses of a lock in the hope that no-one learns its secrets and can thus gain entry without a key. This is the basis for some folks saying that lockpicking is a trade secret, RU-vid picking videos should be banned, and that it should be illegal to own lockpicks unless you're a registered locksmith. This is, of course, horseshit. It's lazy, it's illogical, and it's just plain wrong. Even ten seconds worth of thought will tell you that firstly, possession and use of lockpicking tools on your own locks is no less legal than - say - possession of a spanner to work on your own bicycle. Secondly, even if in some bizarro world owning picks was illegal, we are not living in Orwell's 1984 and there is no such thing as a thought crime...so there is no law against knowing something. Third, for someone to sell you a lock with a known flaw - say, the five pin Kwikset on your front door that can quite literally be picked by a child - in the hope that not talking about the deficiencies of that lock will keep you safe is just flat out dishonest. Fourthly and lastly, a very, very, VERY small number of crimes are actually committed by picking a lock. Ask any locksmith or cop - most have literally never seen a crime where a criminal picked the lock, as opposed to simply cutting a chain or kicking a door in or some other destructive, violent, and low tech method. The vast majority of criminals are stupid, and covert entry is beyond them. So if security by obscurity is obviously so badly flawed, what is a better approach? Easy: the model that software companies use. Most software providers have an excellent and longstanding connection with the hacker community. They write the best and most secure code that they can...and then publish that code and allow hackers to try to break their new product. None of this "Oh well we'll churn out something cheap and flawed, and then hope nobody notices" approach. Hackers find bugs and weaknesses. They report these to the software developers...who then fix the problem...and then the cycle repeats. (Sometimes the software companies pay the hackers "bug bounties" for this. I'm not for a moment suggesting that hobbyist lockpickers ask lock manufacturers for bounties.) The end result is a product that is well designed, and secure enough that its proud creators can say to the world: "Here's our new software. It's so secure that we can publicly show everyone exactly how it works. We have no secrets. We also have a whole worldwide community looking for ways to make it better. And you, the end user, can be assured that it's as good as the best minds in the world can make it." An excellent example of this is the PGP email privacy system. Some high profile hobbyist lockpickers - I'm one of them - are really trying to foster better relationships with the security industry at all levels - locksmiths, lock manufacturers, law enforcement, media, whatever. We all love locks and security in general (be it physical or data security) and are all keen to reach the same goal - better security for everyone. Hobby picking is only really ten or fifteen years old, but there are several high profile examples already where big name lock manufacturers have taken note of weaknesses uncovered by hobbyists and improved their locks accordingly. In one or two rare instances, there have even been lock pickers who have gone on to work fulltime for lock manufacturers. Slowly but surely, we're getting there. Hope this answers your question, and I'm very happy to enter into more discussion regarding this if you have more questions. Best wishes and thanks again for your comment, Michael Maynard.

@@MichaelMaynard hey Micheal, first off I don't think I've ever seen a better answer to this question so thank you for putting this out there. I was also wondering if I could copy and paste to repost this, without names of course, and use some to paraphrase? I am starting to teach a lockpicking and physical security class so I've been gathering good useful materials and this is one of the most important matters I will be discussing. I think this was a perfect answer to a question I'm sure we all get all the time

@@NothingPicksLocks Hey mate, thanks for the kudos. Yep, feel free to copy, paste, and paraphrase at will. Occasional attribution would be appreciated if appropriate, but is by no means mandatory.

@@MichaelMaynard I will absolutely make sure that anything said by or created by you will have your name attached in one fashion or another. thanks for the ok.

Not gonna lie David - those that want to break in somewhere aren't going to bother with a lock, they'll just kick / crowbar their way through the door or a window. The only people apart from hobbyists that actually pick a lock are either locksmiths or law enforcement (e.g. EOD clearing and securing a building prior to an official visit).

Thanks bro. Priyer has volunteered to try to put this thing back together so I'm not even going to attempt it. I told the owner that it was going to die in the picking attempt, and he was cool with that, so to me it's just scrap metal now in any case.

@@MichaelMaynard Geo just gutted and cleaned his today, and I believe he got it back together. You can ask him about it!

Thanks mate. I love the BKS stuff, great quality as you'd expect from the Germans.

Thanks bro. Yeah it's an interesting little beast...as you say, very similar to the Kaba stuff. Apart from getting the tension right, my only word of wisdom would be that after having a good look at those pins I think that the false set is actually oversetting a pin and dropping onto the narrower section of the keypin, kind of like falling into an overset trap on a torpedo shaped keypin. If you hit the false set on this...you've picked everything to shear apart from one overset pin which you can't get back - so it's time to reset.

Yep, same stuff with the Kaba. At least in the janus the driver dont seem to be T-shaped, so no picking the stuff twice to open @@MichaelMaynard

lockmania Oceanaut is a member in the uklocksport forum and I believe Casper on there is also a Dane 🥊🇬🇧👍

@@GordonWlocksport ok thanks My Friend nice to know There is other danes