Security Lessons from a Ferry

On Saturday I traveled from Victoria to Tasmania via the ferry (to attend LCA), they grossly failed in their security measures and provide three lessons for others:

1. Make it possible for people to read security relevant documents .
2. Make obeying the rules not be a cost and make the fact known.
3. Don’t be lazy.

Here is the detail:

1. When driving towards the ferry in a queue that lasted about 30 minutes just around the last corner there was a sign notifying me of the security rules. As soon as it was visible I started reading it but the security guard started frantically waving at me, the time taken to read it was holding up the queue. Therefore I never discovered the full list of things that I’m not supposed to do.
2. One rule was that cylinders of gas (such as propane) were apparently banned and should be surrendered – presumably to prevent a gas leak in the confined space of the ship’s hold from risking an explosion. Anyone who did have such a gas cylinder would probably not want to have it stolen by the security people and would be inclined to lie and hope that the security people wouldn’t find it. If they had made it well known that such gas cylinders would be stored in safe keeping for the duration of the voyage and then returned then they would have been more successful.
3. They wanted to check the luggage compartments of all vehicles. To check the tail-gate of the Kia Carnival van I was driving first required that all the bags which had been put over the back seat be removed (they were resting against the tail-gate and would fall out if it was opened). When the guard realised that they would have to wait for me to empty a lot of luggage out they decided to just trust me that I didn’t have any bad things on board (even though due to point #1 I didn’t know what bad things were). This problem happened a second time when I reached Tasmania and the guards wanted to search for fruit.