But they didn't let me bring my camera in, so there's no pics.
This is the place:
National Microbiology Laboratory - Public Health Agency of Canada
CBC News Indepth: Biological Weapons
They were having an open house for the public today, so my wife and I thought we'd pop in for a look. The place was crawling with RCMP, and the visitors were corralled in an area with some booths set up outlining generally what goes on in the facility. Not super interesting, not even with the free colourful latex gloves which they were handing out.
There was, however, one especially interesting thing which the public got access to, which was the operations center. It was a room about 50' x 70', with conference tables in two rows down the middle of the room. One entire wall was a giant display consisting of 16 or so 40" flatscreens. Along each wall were another 8 screens of the same size. On the conference tables were telephones with touchscreens that could be used for video conferencing and controlling the displays in the room.
The background on the main screen (the 16 linked together) was a satellite image map of the world, with icons scattered all across it representing various situations which were being monitored. There were about a dozen windows on top of the map image which displayed anything from field reports to news channels from around the world. The whole thing was exactly the way war rooms are shown in TV. The real interesting bit came when I asked one of the staff how they get real-time updates for the map - if they actually have that many affiliates or operations around the world, or that level of cooperation exists between other countries in this field.
His answer was this: every time someone buys something at a drugstore or anywhere that sells health-related products, the barcode on the product is scanned. That information is transmitted directly to their organization, and when an unusual amount of certain medications are purchased, the location is automatically flagged as having a potential issue.
I was impressed, and naturally wondered what else that level of surveillance was being applied to.
Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence
The Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) - Public Health Agency of Canada
This is the place:
National Microbiology Laboratory - Public Health Agency of Canada
CBC News Indepth: Biological Weapons
They were having an open house for the public today, so my wife and I thought we'd pop in for a look. The place was crawling with RCMP, and the visitors were corralled in an area with some booths set up outlining generally what goes on in the facility. Not super interesting, not even with the free colourful latex gloves which they were handing out.
There was, however, one especially interesting thing which the public got access to, which was the operations center. It was a room about 50' x 70', with conference tables in two rows down the middle of the room. One entire wall was a giant display consisting of 16 or so 40" flatscreens. Along each wall were another 8 screens of the same size. On the conference tables were telephones with touchscreens that could be used for video conferencing and controlling the displays in the room.
The background on the main screen (the 16 linked together) was a satellite image map of the world, with icons scattered all across it representing various situations which were being monitored. There were about a dozen windows on top of the map image which displayed anything from field reports to news channels from around the world. The whole thing was exactly the way war rooms are shown in TV. The real interesting bit came when I asked one of the staff how they get real-time updates for the map - if they actually have that many affiliates or operations around the world, or that level of cooperation exists between other countries in this field.
His answer was this: every time someone buys something at a drugstore or anywhere that sells health-related products, the barcode on the product is scanned. That information is transmitted directly to their organization, and when an unusual amount of certain medications are purchased, the location is automatically flagged as having a potential issue.
I was impressed, and naturally wondered what else that level of surveillance was being applied to.
Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence
The Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) - Public Health Agency of Canada
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