"The premise is that a key holds some kind of secret that lets you unlock something," said Savage. "But it's a very funny secret, its a secret that can easily be seen." Creating a new key is easy enough that some locksmiths and security experts do it by sight alone. The locks the UCSD team broke were some of the most common in the country. Marc Weber Tobias, an attorney and security expert who has been picking locks since he was a boy, says the UCSD project does a good job of underscoring the insecurity of conventional cylinder locks. But the idea of someone standing up to a mile away with high resolution camera and stealing keys with a shutter is small compared to the next generation of video cameras being installed. "The real issue is the new digital video cameras shooting at 30 frames a second," said Tobias. "There are millions and millions of these cameras everywhere." If someone got their hands on sensitive parts of the video they could easily duplicate key sets. Locksmiths, and the UCSD scientists won't use their talents or technology for ill-gotten gains. But not everyone is so ethical, and experts urge people to take physical security more seriously. "This isn't the biggest security threat that you might face," said Savage. "But you should only take your keys out when you are going to use them."
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