on physical security
(photo by stebulus, licensed under cc-by)
I was entering a venue on-campus yesterday when I glanced at the padlock clasp hasp on the thick-and-heavy doors, and started wondering about physical security..
The door is one thick, large door with a smaller flap on the left. It’s got one of those large bars on the inside that will unlatch it, and a normal push-down handle on the outside. There’s a hasp like the one in the photo attached to the outside, across the two flaps.
Well, you see, someone had left the unlocked padlock on the hasp. Someone could grab the lock, close the door, push the hasp home, and render the door inoperable whether you’re inside or outside. If you did that to all 4 doors, people would effectively be locked in.
Even if there wasn’t a padlock there, you could always BYO. Or use a zip tie. Doesn’t sound good right?
Walking in, it made me wonder if the hasp is large enough to permit it to be locked even when the usual padlock is locked on in the opened state. If it isn’t, what if you used a zip tie instead? I suspect at least one of those would work.
Doors should be easily operable with no key from the secure side, not the insecure side. One with a keyhole on the insecure side would make much more sense – it’s presumably about as troublesome to lock a door with a pick set as unlocking it.
Given the poor cell and WiFi coverage in the venue, if you had a RF jammer, and you did something to lock people in.. it’d be really terrible. Don’t get any ideas, there might be people inside!
Anyway, while it makes sense, it doesn’t make ¢ or $ so I don’t suppose the building managers will do anything about it. Life goes on, for now, until something happens. Then we’ll see PR spinning like the one about hungry ghosts and ‘snack times’.
