The fact is that we can't protect ourselves from a determined
criminal/terrorist. In the air, on land, or on the water.

Timothy McVeigh blew up an office building with a rental truck. Maybe
we shouldn't rent trucks to Irish Americans.

When flying gets to the point where there is *no* checked luggage
allowed and everybody changes into a unisex, disposable, paper suit and
checks their street clothes as well it will still be possible to bring
down a plane. A shoulder fired missle doesn't depend upon whether the
people aboard have access to hair gel or toothpaste in the passenger
cabin.

Homeland Security protects some of our ferry runs in Puget Sound. Most
of the time that you see the chase boats with the 50 caliber machine
guns mounted on the bow the ferries are going between downtown Seattle
and Bainbridge Island. The average household income on Bainbridge is
probably a lot higher than just about anywhere else outside of Bill
Gates' neighborhood in Medina, so when a brand new ferry is brought
into the system it always starts on the Seattle to Bainbridge run. The
older Bainbridge ferry then gets assigned to the run to Bremerton,
Kingston, or one of the other more "working class" destinations.
Bainbridge also gets a disproportionate number of the armed escorts.
Gotta protect the women, children and billlionaires first, you know.
:-)

When you line up to board a ferry in a vehicle, drug and weapons
detecting dogs run up and down the que, sniffing out the n'erdowells
and ****ing on the ocassional tire. Nobody searches the walk-on
passengers; you could carry a sniper rifle aboard broken down into a
briefcase and nobody would care.

The chase boats with the machine boats would only really be effective
against an attack
from another vessel. A terrorist criminal with an IQ above 75 would
figure out that it would be a better plan to attack a ferry with
something brought aboard, rather than try to reenact the USS Cole and
ram a ferry with a kamikazi inflatable.

I suspect that the next time terrorist criminals want to bring down a
plane in the US it will be with means not carried aboard by passengers.
A ferry boat would be more logically attacked from on board. Because so
many of these people are willing to die as part of the act, they are
nearly impossible to stop. We can't check everything and still go about
the business of daily living. We can't allow terrorist criminals to
make us perpetually fearful, as if we do some fascist leader will
eventually respond to promise us "security" in exchange for liberty and
we will no longer be a free society.