Simple question: What happens to a maglock if you cut its power?

If their failure state is to remain locked, this strikes me as a pretty serious safety concern - your building loses power (as might happen in an emergency - a fire, for example) and suddenly everyone is locked in their rooms. This is why real-world electronic locking systems usually fail open.

If they do fail open, however, then why would you ever bother with the Hardware + Logic test to hot-wire them open, when you could just cut the power?

Or am I missing something?

It's Hardware + Logic to cut the power the right way?
One of those two-power circuits things that cutting the wrong one locks it permanently, kind of deals.

Because cutting the power draws more attention, usually.

Because security systems are usually set off by power going off. If you cut the power to my RL alarm system, it sets off the alarm at the alarm HQ.
I imagine the maglock as a combo of the door lock and security system keypad. When you do whatever it is that opens the door, it also disables the security system on the other side of the door. For most places that would be the entire security system.

You can cut the power sure, the maglock opens, but you set off the alarm.

My thought on the security sub routine for a mag lock suffering power loss (assume wired or wifi enabled to the rest of the building):
My assumption is that at the moment of power loss, the mag lock has power for a split second (via capaicitor or short term back up battery power).

Step 1: Check ambient tempature in surrounding area.
Step 2: If above <insert appropriate temp> unlock door and alert fire/police department/security spider.
Step 3: If not activate camera and notify security spider.


Note-pulling the plug is easy, preventing the alert b/c of the power loss is more difficult.

for SR, how about Maglock goes into battery mode, where it uses a small internal battery to keep the lock functioning for a few hours while sending the no main power alarm to it's HQ. this prevents people being locked inside but also preserves the lock's purpose.

Depends where the maglock is and what it is its keeping shut. If it is a cell door, vault or some high-security area it will need electricity to open. Cutting the wires will lock it and raise an alarm.

If it is for public or office spaces it will open (to let people through) but still won't respond to the security grid (which may count it as suspicious activity)

Well, you could cut main power and then the battery power.......when I say back-up I'm talking a small chip imbedded in the hardware that is impossible to get at without destroyin the mag lock first.

Thanks for the ideas. Here's my thoughts:

There's no reason why a maglock couldn't be self-powered. The world of 2072 must have amazing batteries - when was the last time you heard of anyone having to recharge their commlink? It's easily possible that batteries have advanced to the point where you can power something like a maglock for long enough that you wouldn't have to worry about the battery dying.

(Incidentally, the dorm I lived in freshman year had locks opened by a card swipe and a PIN - it's cheaper to reprogram a lock than it is to physically change the keyhole. These locks were battery-powered, as I learned when my friend's lock battery died and he was locked out after taking a shower. So this is really quite plausible.)

That being said, maglocks don't do authentication internally - it's relayed (sometimes wirelessly, sometimes through a hard line) to a server somewhere, which checks the passkey or whatever you're using to authenticate against an encrypted database (or not encrypted, since encryption doesn't really matter in 2072 thanks to the "Heinrich maneuver") where it is verified.

So, if you cut power to the maglock, it loses its connection to the authentication node. Any security system set up by someone with two brain cells to rub together will trigger some kind of an alarm on this condition. That alarm could notify a spider, it could notify maintenance, it could notify security, it could notify the fire department - who knows. However, due to safety concerns, it still has to fail open. Even if maglocks were sophisticated enough to have temperature sensors, fire is only one of a host of possible failure conditions.

Thoughts? I'm particularly interested in this server-side authentication interpretation, since it means that one could conceivably spoof commands to a maglock if the connection was wireless. (If it's wired, you'd need access to the security node, and at that point you can just go to town.)

Due to battery failure--though we don't know the rates of this in 2070--it would likely notify maintenance first. It's cheap and easy to get the nearest janitor to stroll over that way and check if something is wrong and escalate the issue if necessary than it would be to call in a swat team because "some runner might have broken in."

Or they could go "printer on fire" and just call in the swat team.

They are IRL. You just swap the batteries when they randomly stop opening.

"PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?"

Seems to me that the best and easiest way to bypass a maglock, outside of a passkey, is to either have a good electronics B/R (SR3, I know), or be good enough that you can just hack into the security and disable that particular lock.

My 2 would be to have the doors open from the inside (much like simple mech doors already can); in the event of a fire a door would easily be forced open by any fire department should they need access. Keep the bells and whistles for power loss/tamper but locking tech is already at/surpassed mags

Some thing to consider:

1) Most real world security systems are concerned about folks going into the the facility, not impeding those going out. Only at the most sensitive of areas generally have card out.
2) Liabilities in the sixth world arn't what they are in our world, that means if a facility was sensitive enough to warrant "Lock in" security the risk of fire has likely allready been factored into the situation and been deemed acceptable.
3) Batteries are amazing things, frankly in most situations I don't see any reason why under 2070 tech maglocks wouldn't function normally on their own internal reserves for HOURS.

Incidentally: "Paper Cassette; Load Letter Paper"

Confusing, but not illogical. Unlike "Printer On Fire" (which was the worst possible scenario for the error code*, and there are no reports of those printers ever being on fire).

*E.G. one of two. two bits, four results: printer online and working, printer offline + error (needs paper), printer online + error (has paper and is still running: fire hazard), and printer offline.

Pretty much all this.

In the event of an emergency, like a fire, I could see a 2070 "smart" lock system that would normally require authentication for both in/out bound traffic disabling the out bound authentication while locking down inbound to the point that only designated responders are allowed *in*.

Think of the override key in an elevator for firefighters on crack.

You cut the power and set off the fire emergency subroutine expecting all the locks to default open. Instead, all the locks default so that you can get out of the building super-easy, but getting *into* the building requires firefighter credentials. While an alarm is going off. And the real Emergency Responders, the building's spider, and probably the building's security is assisting a stream of people from getting out of the building and trying to identify the source of the emergency.

In other words, depending on how tech savvy your target is, simply cutting the power might make your life even harder.