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.

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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 already
know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of
roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking 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 in the
interest of *honest* persons to know this fact, because the *dishonest*
are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically;
and the spread of 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.
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
-- published around 1850

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