Introduction I was awoken by a pounding on the door of my room--long before was I sufficiently awake to answer the door, those outside had made clear they were policemen. But I wasn't in Australia, where I grew up, or Britain, where I was born. I was an overseas student in Eastern Europe, where nocturnal visits from the police were something to be feared. By the time I let them into my room, I was completely awake, so, when they demanded to see my passport, I knew precisely where to find it. As it had been stamped at the border when I entered the country and I had met with the appropriate government authorities before commencing my course of study, I was confident that they would find nothing untoward. It transpired however that, as my course of study was longer than the 6 week limit imposed on tourist visas (such as the stamp that was in my passport), I should have obtained a longer term student visa. In this situation, the officials charged with administering the rules for various kinds of visas knew those rules. However, I hadn't been informed as to what the rules were, although I was supposed to comply with them. If some information had been provided, even in one of the languages of my host country rather than English, I could have organized a translation, but with no information at all I was "in the dark." This, of course, was not a matter of life and death: once I had the correct papers, all was well. Failure to adhere to rules can be fatal however. Following an incident in 1972 in which a cargo hold door had blown off a McDonnell Douglas DC10, the aircraft manufacturer implemented a cor- rective measure to enable baggage handlers to establish that cargo hold doors were securely closed before takeoff. This measure involved the addition of a small window that allowed baggage handlers