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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

BTW, while this may be a overly paranoid, check your local laws before getting a set of picks, especially if you plan on taking them anywhere.

When I got my set I lived in New York City and there you could plausibly be charged with possession of burglary tools for carrying them around.

As a practical matter I never worried about it, but things being what they are you should at least be informed about possible risks.

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In pretty much every state, it's not illegal to carry lockpicks, just illegal to pick locks you don't have permission from the lock's owner to pick.

There are probably exceptions, but this holds true in at least California and Florida. Also, ianal, so I could be wrong.

This is the law in Arizona:

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/1...

The key here is intent. As in, can a cop convince a judge you intended to commit or aid a burglary.

When I got my set some years ago I was in New York, and you had to show that they were legitimate tools for your job in order to buy them. (They were, mostly.)

It's a crapshoot though. Definitely look it up for each location. A lot of state laws include verbiage like "with the intent to commit a crime", while others word it such that possessing lock picks is the proof of intent, and where I am, there is no statewide law.

The relevant sections of the California Penal Code:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen...

There's a great scene in the Wachowski brother's early movie "Bound" where Gina Gershon is wearing a lock picking set as if it was a set of earrings.... Don't disagree with the legal risk you're describing, but female hackers might try the gershon approach.

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