Reply to post: Re: One rule for you...

Re: One rule for you...

...were safety release buttons which disabled the lock...

The company I worked for leased a newly built building (actually, built to their spec) that had similar electronic door locks that you opened with proximity cards. All good and well, except for the fact that it had no override/safety release buttons, nor battery back-up for the locks, with the result that in the case of a power failure, no-one could go through any door. It just so happened that we were in the midst of two-hour rolling black-outs (or load-shedding schedules, as it was called at the time) that could strike at any moment (they later implemented scheduled times for load-shedding, so one could prepare).

The first time I was caught behind a door (luckily for me on the opening side), I saw that a thin piece of sturdy material (like a credit card or a thin piece of metal) could open the lock by sliding it behind the bolt and then just moving it downwards. So I permanently kept one of those metal covers that one found on the backs of computers that covers the expansion card slots in my pocket. It also helped that all the doors on the floor I worked on opened inward, so it was a cinch to get out.

Cue the uproar when I in all innocence mentioned (in a meeting) that the building was not secure, since one of the back doors could be opened from the outside in a similar way (this was before it became general knowledge that I was the go-to guy to open locked doors). No-one would believe me, as the installers/suppliers had assured them that this system was ultra-secure and that there was no way anyone could go through a door without using a card and that all movements through doors were logged. The logging system, however, could only log card presentation events, not actual opening of locked doors without using a card.

They only believed me after I gave a live demonstration that it took all of five seconds to open any of those super-secure doors.

AC for obvious reasons (even though this took place more than twenty years ago).