Interesting throughout, here is one bit:
Q: How realistic are movies that show people breaking into vaults?
A: Not very! In the movies it takes five minutes of razzle-dazzle; in real life it’s usually at least a couple of hours of precision work for an easy, lost combination lockout.Most vault lockouts are caused by malfunctions. A bank employee over-winds the time lock, a technician makes a mistake servicing the vault, or there was no maintenance because the bank has initiated yet another round of cost cutting.
Another 10-20% of my income comes from law enforcement searches and seizures or estate, aka “dead relative” openings. They hire me and I drill it open, but these are not situations where I like to hang around too long.
Q: Do you ever look inside?
A: I NEVER look. It’s none of my business. Involving yourself in people’s private affairs can lead to being subpoenaed in a lawsuit or criminal trial. Besides, I’d prefer not knowing about a client’s drug stash, personal porn, or belly button lint collection.When I’m done I gather my tools and walk to the truck to write my invoice. Sometimes I’m out of the room before they open it. I don’t want to be nearby if there is a booby trap.
The full article is here, and for the pointer I thank Anton Radice.
“Thief”, the Michael Mann film starring James Caan, was excellent at showing the amount of work and time necessary to break into vaults.
Also a good movie.
Have you ever read “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman?” He tells some of his anecdotes involving taking up the hobby of safe-cracking including figuring out how to crack the safes at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
I definitely get where he is coming from. After years of struggling to open a stubborn giant safe, not to mention worrying about its contents, I never want to deal with a safe again.
Did you get it open? What was in it? This sounds like it could be a subject for a funny novel or movie.
What I hate on TV and in movies are these ‘hackers’ who sit down at some machine they’ve never seen and tap tap tap “I’m in!” If you could crack a safe in 15 minutes why would anyone buy them?
What I find funny is the totally unrealistic screen-views of secure systems in media portrayals. Blinking lights, scroilling marquees, flashing amber text, insistant beeps etc.
Most secure systems I’ve worked on have pretty plain and boring interfaces. Oftentimes a text terminal is the face of what can be a multi-million dollar, classified supercomputer.
Funnily though, actually watching a well practiced hand at a text terminal can be pretty impressive. A quick user can cause text to appear much faster than it is typed, and often process a ton of information incredibly quickly.
I know what you mean. A vim editing session can look like magic.
The worst is “don’t worry, he’s a genius, he did his undergrad at Caltech/MIT”, now watch him do math/computer magic that a team of actual experts would require weeks or months to do.
The worst is I did my undergrad at MIT and TV has convinced people I’m supposed to be able to do these things. Somehow it also convinced them that I know why the speakers on their desktops don’t work. My sister in law comes up to me with a 15 year old laptop running Windows 95 and wants me to figure out why it doesn’t boot up anymore. These people have to be stopped!
Quote the computer-guy: RTFM!
So what you are saying is…you want to give back the free rents from your reputational associations of your institute of higher learning?
Safe crackers that are hired for opening personal or bank vaults know that it’s not their job to put their nose where it’s not necessary. Although its interesting to see what people keep in their safe it’s not their problem, plus people who hire them are trusting them to come to their home or place of business to open their vault.
Have you ever read “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman?” He tells some of his anecdotes involving taking up the hobby of safe-cracking including figuring out how to crack the safes at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
The surprising thing was how unsophisticated the locks were. They worked a lot like the locks on my high school lockers — in fact, I suspect they were the same mechanism. The real security for the Manhattan Project was the fence, the armed guards, and the 50 miles of desert surrounding it. The actual spies who stole the atomic secrets never even touched a lock.
The whole series of interviews with people who have unusual or interesting jobs is pretty good. It’s a good change of pace from the normal McSweeney’s articles, which are like a more twee version of the Onion.
Neat interview. Sounds like an intelligent skilled guy. You’d have to be smart to do that kind of work to adapt to the different problems you’d face. I was surprised he does jobs for law enforcement. Guess I’ve watched too many movies or TV shows – I thought the cops and especially feds had their own lockpicking experts.
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