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In preparation for any possible disruption of the Olympics, ranging from foreign terrorist attacks to homespun protests over social injustice, China has organized massive numbers of people. At the same time, it has purchased the best high-tech security hardware, software and services money can buy.
There are at least 500,000, and possibly as many as 1 million, personnel guarding the Beijing Games. They are drawn from the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army, the paramilitary People’s Armed Police, members of the State Security (espionage) and Public Security (police) Bureaus, traditional civilian neighborhood watch committees, plus groups like the Shoudu Minbing, or Capital People’s Soldiers – mostly men with some military or police training.
As for technology, little information is publicly available about the US$6.5 billion “Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere,” initiated in 2001 when the city won the right to host the 2008 Olympics and completed this year. It established a video surveillance system across the capital that involves 300,000 closed-circuit television cameras.
Besides creating the second-largest urban “eyes in the sky” system in the world after London, Beijing spent an additional US$300-400 million dollars on security equipment for the Olympics, according to the Security Industry Association based in the U.S. city of Alexandria, Virginia. Heavyweight U.S. companies such as Honeywell, General Electric and International Business Machines are serving the high end of China’s security market.
Honeywell’s sophisticated monitoring system enables Chinese security forces to analyze footage from indoor and outdoor video feeds, and VisioWave from GE gives authorities simultaneous control and communication on fast-moving targets detected by thousands of cameras. While both will be used during the Olympics, all eyes are on the introduction of IBM’s Smart Surveillance System, or S3.
If successful, IBM’s system integration capabilities – handling analog and digital hardware legacies, networked communication using Internet protocols along with new analytical tools like facial recognition software – will take video surveillance capabilities to unprecedented heights.
Asked about the advanced algorithms needed to make S3 a success, Chris W. Johnson, professor of computing science at Glasgow University, told UPI, “Until the Games are over, it’d be pretty dumb for anyone to talk in too much detail about the specifics.”
Johnson heads a research group aiming to improve reporting and analysis of incidents across safety-critical domains including the transportation, military and healthcare sectors. He has also analyzed public safety at Olympic events from the perspective of organizations grappling with technical integration, and more recently, the convergence of physical and digital security.
China is also using well-established technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID) and global positioning systems (GPS) to track the movement of athletes and spectators during the Olympics.
Media officials with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee declined to answer questions on whether or not such devices were being used in ID cards issued to 20,000 journalists expected in the Chinese capital for the Games. Reporters are supposed to carry the cards with them at all times in the city.
“I'm sure they are in your passes,” Johnson said. The wearer’s ability to detect such a device, or to know what it’s being used for, “depends on the technology,” he added.
RFID tags are cheap and emit a local signal detected typically within a few meters. Sensors are deployed in fixed locations, so if someone moves close to a sensor carrying a tag then you know about it; GPS works on satellite signals and does not work well indoors, Johnson said.
Putting RFID on tickets, clothes or even food containers – and using GPS only to track moving objects outside – is most cost effective, the expert noted. He said RFID was “used all over the place now; for example, in season tickets to regular football matches in the U.K.” Johnson said British police employed them as an effective way to catch criminals who were soccer fans.
As for GPS devices, they can be placed in ID cards or tickets, and operate on a power source like a watch battery to generate a small radio signal that can be picked up by a receiver. Security personnel walking around the city with mobile sensors can use GPS to find out what people are nearby.
“Imagine they have more sensors outside stadiums in security perimeter zones that are tied to CCTV cameras,” Johnson said. “If you're (an individual) of interest and your ticket or ID goes near a sensor, then the cameras know where to focus and begin tracking you.”
In a paper on the convergence of physical and digital security, Johnson noted the “radically different political and social context of the Beijing Games compared with other Olympics.”
Asked to elaborate, the professor said: “The context includes the use of local communities in monitoring potential troublemakers – compare the level of organization Beijing can call upon in this respect compared to the Italian authorities (during the Winter Games in Turin) trying to get public cooperation over protests, or the Melbourne disturbances before Sydney.”
“Perhaps I'm just being naive and don’t know enough about the reality of the political situation in the provinces, but I can’t see these sorts of protests being allowed in Beijing,” he added. Nationwide, China officially acknowledged more than 87,000 protests termed “serous disturbances” last year.
With Beijing serving as the model for urban development that is emulated across the country, technology looks likely to play a growing role to keep the authoritarian government in firm control. And the Beijing Olympics will be the testing ground to see how efficient it can be.
