#security engineering

This is because they use features built into most elevators.

If you hold down two buttons, the floor you want and close doors, the elevator will skip all other floors and go straight to your floor. Just hold it down until the doors actually close. I have personally used this feature when I was running late to a movie and I had to go up 5 floors. The elevator I was on even travelled faster than usual, though that might be because it didn't not have to consider stopping.

Sometimes this won’t work because a master key is required, which can either be found with the building manager or a firefighter, if you can convince them to lend you a hand. Sometimes they can be found online, but always check if you can legally possess them before you buy.

There are other features you can use.

Cancelling a floor number depends on the lift’s model. Some allow for a double click of the floor number, some require 5 repeated button presses, and others want you to hold the open door button while double clicking the floor number. Just don’t blame me if other users click their floor number when they see it turn off. 

But if elevators have all their features, why don’t people use and abuse them? 

I think this is mostly because people don’t know about them. Which is just security by obscurity. 

There may also be social pressures to not mess with other’s people’s use of the technology. I don’t think knowledgable users want to be left in an enclosed space with one or more someones that are frustrated that you skipped their floor. It won’t stop someone what wants to use it on their own though. 

It would seem that having these features available to police is more important than having some people that abuse the features. 

My concern is if a person of interest uses this feature to avoid police encounters. I think this is avoided by how police approach a building they want to storm. Exits should be covered, so even if the individual does avoid police on the different lift, they should not succeed avoiding a confrontation. 

So it seems that even if there is a risk of misuse, it has a low impact on the standard operation and use of the lift, and if the feature was misused by a police person of interest, that person should still encounter the police, meaning the risk of loosing them is low. It’s also not a high impact risk for the building owner in most cases.

Our case study this week was covering Houdini’s mission to expose fraud “mediums”, spiritualists that were believed to be able to contact the spiritual realm. His’ final attempt was to create a protocol with his wife, such that when he died, she would attempt to contact him via mediums, and she would know if a medium was a fake or not. 

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