Ultimately, it was symbolic.
If someone can open locks with her mind... I would presume she can also untie a knot... or break materials where a knot or lock does *not* exist.
It was surprisingly polite of Lyta to maintain that illusion of security for others. Perhaps she regretted her unreasonable action against the personality of non-involved people, and therefore agreed to comply.
If the goal of B5 security... would have been true security... instead of employing technology from the middle ages, they should have employed modern technology.
Meaning, in the room... and perhaps some rooms away... should have resided multiple robots, monitoring Lyta, and likewise monitoring each other's physical integrity. Ready to open a cocktail party of multiple tranquilizing gases.
A telekinetic with a biological brain... would be unlikely to move efficiently against something which can respond a thousand times... before a nerve cell completes one cycle.
Even if a single machine could be disabled before it responds (presumably one fairly slow in machine terms, with no parallelism or backup) multiple machines monitoring each other would stretch the task of breaking them all beyond ability.
Ultimately, had security *really* been foremost, they could have always dropped the temperature. That approach however... includes a liability. One cannot speak, reason or negotiate with someone who is frozen.
