Google co-founder picks locks for fun

NEWINGTON, Conn. _ On a recent evening in this quiet suburb, Matthew Fiddler hunched over a door lock, jiggling it with a pick and poking it with a wrench. In just a few moments, it popped open.
Mr. Fiddler wasn't locked out and he isn't a thief. Instead, the 36-year-old father of four, clad in khakis and a blue button-down shirt, was seated around a table with a handful of people who pick locks for fun. The group, a chapter of Locksport International, gets together monthly to poke and prod everything from padlocks to dead-bolt cylinders.
Pin tumbler locks, commonly used on doors, mailboxes or padlocks, are opened with a key when their spring-loaded pins are pushed into the right alignment. To open them without a key, hobbyists often use a slender pick to maneuver the pins, while at the same time sticking a tension wrench in the keyhole to apply turning pressure.
Another popular method is ''bumping,'' which involves inserting a specially filed key blank into a lock and hitting _ or ''bumping'' _ it.
Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin says he became interested in lock picking as a graduate student and years ago picked the lock of Google's offices when he didn't have a key.