Code Red Vancouver: Suddenly I Am Living In America

I just found out at work today that my office building will be imposing an American-style security alert system for the duration of the Olympics. The management plan to use this system to let tenants (the nervous office workers) know the level of "threat" on any given day. The system uses colours which correspond to these potential threats.

Now, for security reasons, I can't divulge the actual colour scheme/threat system. However, to give you an idea, it goes something like this:

Green - No threats today (yay!)

Yellow - Proceed with caution because there is a potential, unknown, minor threat, possibly a protest (those damn protesters, always wanting to exercise their right to free speech. How dare they threaten my office building with their cardboard signs and chanting cries).

Orange - A definite threat of some kind in the area, such as a nearby building.

Red - A direct threat to the building itself, as in a bomb threat.

One would hope that they do not actually plan to send out this Code Red colour alert throughout the building. One would hope, that if there is a bomb threat, workers are told not to enter the building or are evacuated from the building to stand around outside or take a long lunch. I don't really care for the idea of receiving an email alert that says something to the effect of: "Hey, our building might blow up." I'm fairly confident this would be bad for productivity.

In other news, there are definitely more security cameras than ever downtown. I realized that I hadn't noticed them because many are the round 360 degrees cameras. Normally, the number of these cameras monitoring our every move in Orweillian fashion would bother me. But, given my recently developed phobia of my building blowing up, I am not as bothered by the cameras as I otherwise would be.

Still, it would be nice to see an end to this 1984 style of surveillance after the Olympics. The rainbow security system and potential bomb threats can go too.