What happens after the crowds go home?

On July 7, 2005, one day after Londoners received word that the city would host the 2012 Olympics, terrorist bombs tore through the public transit system, killing 56 people. To prevent a repeat attack and protect the roughly 25,000 athletes, family members, coaches, and officials attending (along with roughly 700,000 spectators), spending on security has topped $1.6 billion. Sydney's pre-9/11 Olympic security in 2000 cost only $179.6 million.

Some privacy advocates have questioned the efficacy of such huge outlays of taxpayer cash. James Baker, the campaign manager for the privacy organization No2ID, points out that in May, a concerned workman at The Sun tabloid was able to smuggle a fake bomb into the Olympic Park in spite of spite of iris and hand scanners at the site. Baker also wonders if authorities will be able to use the web of surveillance technologies quickly enough to be effective -- he points out that in 2009, several of the more than 10,000 license plate scanners around the country detected the car of Peter Chapman 16 different times -- he was wanted for arson, theft, and violation of his status as a sex offender. But police were inundated with hits from the system and did not follow up. Two days later, he raped and murdered a teen he met via Facebook.

More from our own Andrew Rosenblum in CNN Money magazine.

 

Comments

[Sujatha]

Minority Report, here we come! At least, majorly in the UK, which having the advantage of being small and densely populated, can afford to mount 24/7 surveillance on every corner of the isle without having to spend more than a couple of billion pounds.
I'm sure that's why the drone manufacturers are pushing for major expansion of the US market, since the spaces needing to be covered are way too large for strategically mounted cameras here.

Congratulations on your article being published in CNN Money, Andrew!

[Dean C. Rowan]

Meanwhile, at the V&A, an exhibition of British design between 1948 (when London formerly hosted the Olympics) and 2012 that "reveals how British designers have responded to economic, political and cultural forces that have fundamentally shaped how we live today." Among the featured objects: a 1964 Kodak Brownie Vecta camera.

[Andrew R.]

Thanks guys - yes, a somewhat dystopian picture emerged, in speaking with James Baker, the privacy advocate. He seemed less concerned with the displays of military might for the Olympic, than the relatively garden-variety data mining that the national and local authorities can undertake.

For example, since there are over 10,000 cameras around the country that can automatically read and log your license plate as you drive by, and the government can legally track and log all of your phone and Internet contacts (not the substance of the conversation, but who and the time you called), Baker argues that a very "intimate" portrait of who you are and what you do all day can be whipped out without much trouble, or warning to you.