NBC's Today misses the real YouTube story

I was just watching the Today show on NBC and they had a story about how YouTube was aiding criminals by hosting videos on how to defeat locks through lock picking. A similar theme of anti-YouTube lock picking started to show up in UK based news media outlets earlier this morning - All Headline News, Metro UK, Life Style Extra.

Okay, so let me try to figure out who I think I should be outraged at... YouTube for socially distributing this information or the Locksmith community for failing to protect me against it in the first place?

Now let me back up and re-clarify something.... we are not merely talking about some silly little metal pick that takes 3-5 minutes to open a lock. I am talking about using the metal from a soda can to open a Master padlock or filing your average key in such a way that it will open ANY deadbolt in under 10 seconds. Far more than even NBC lead us all to believe. Shame on NBC for missing the REAL STORY - Why hasn't something been done to fix this... no prevent this from happening to our locks?

Old News to Everyone Else

I actually posted about several of these methods on this website just a few months ago. And my post had sources that were almost 2 years old. The news person on the Today show said that he could not find any videos that explicitly showed every detail of lock picking nor did he find that it was easy to do himself after trying. Well shame on him for not doing a lick of research because there are tons of these types of videos. Just Google "bump key".

Perhaps the Today show was just trying to jump on a story that was just starting to hit the UK and wanted to be the first in the US to catch the wave rather than report on why the lock industry fails to protect us. Perhaps in their rush for coverage they didn't research the fact that numerous local stations across the US have already shunned the Lock industry by reporting AND demonstrating how simple it is to defeat common locks. Perhaps they took for granted that criminals don't have to watch YouTube to learn how to rob your house.

Reality Check

Really now... why would your average criminal spend even 30 seconds trying to pick a lock when he can break a window in 2 seconds? Even with an alarm criminals know that the average police response time is well over 10 minutes (alarm goes off -> alarm company calls your house -> alarm company calls PD dispatch -> Dispatch sends out request -> police eventually show up knowing that about 90% 0f all alarms are false). Just how secure do you think the average home is anyway. Homes are not robbed by trained Super Criminals. Its a hammer and maybe a screwdriver... or one of the garden tools laying in your backyard that ends up going through your window.

Welcome to the Tech World

In the tech world perhaps we are just too used to open source and whitehat hacking. We constantly get bombarded with security flaws and errors. We have a community of thousands who's sole purpose is to discover the stupid little mistakes that happen and then expose them to the world. That is what it takes to motivate change. That is capitalism. That is a free and open market society. Do not try to take that away from us.

Whether it is something stuck in my teeth, or the fact that a 10 year old girl can defeat my front door in 10 seconds, I really would rather know than be oblivious and ignorant to the fact. I thought that was why I watched the news in the first place, but I guess it has more to do with sensationalism and market share. Shame on lock makers, shame on NBC.

Technorati Tags:bump key, youtube politics security