The United States has invested significant resources toward creating a surveillance capability that can detect emerging diseases or acts of bioterrorism. While this is a timely pursuit — the WHO states new diseases are being detected at an unprecedented rate — the effort remains disjointed and oriented toward “high-tech” solutions, often at the expense of potentially readily apparent solutions. This article examines extant surveillance efforts and proposes that a more mundane approach to biosurveillance may actually be more productive.