Official News - page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: SECURITY FISH TO THE RESCUE

by Hazed

Utilizing every possible ally in the war against terror, the US authorities have drafted in help from an unlikely source: fish. Concerns about possible threats against drinking water supplies have led to the powers that be in New York, San Francisco and Washington setting up tanks containing small numbers of bluegills (also known as sunfish), into which municipal water is pumped.

The fish have been trained to signal if they detect anything odd in the water, taking a leaf from flipper the dolphin's book... no, of course they haven't, although wouldn't it be great if you could do that? The system is actually run by a computer system which registers changes in the fishes' vital signs and sends an alert via email, pager or other mobile device, should anything be wrong.

The bluegill terror vigilantes in New York have already proved themselves - they recently detected a diesel spill in the water supply before any of the Department of Environmental Protection's other monitoring equipment sprang into action.

The fish do, however, have their limitations - they cannot reliably detect germs. In case you were wondering, the report we read also advised us that "they are no use against other sorts of attacks - the bombing of a water main, or computer hackers attacking the systems that control the flow of water." Damn, we need to train them better!

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