Hacker News Reader

Right, but just like with e.g. cryptography, you need to make it more expensive to crack than whatever it's protecting.

Well yea, you could blow it apart with explosives, melt it with acid, or beat the key holder with a wrench until he gave you the key. But I think the idea around "picking" is to nondestructively operate the lock without using the key it is designed for or a copy of such.

Can you make a lock that reliably detects pick attempts and renders itself temporarily or permanently inoperable? (Not that very many lock users would prefer this security vs. availability tradeoff over what they're used to, probably.)