Slashdot Mirror
Olympics to Have Massive Surveillance Network
sharkdba writes "CNN has an article about Olympic digital security. This should be of interest to /. readers since it's a supposedly largest surveillance network ever. Thousands of cameras are combined with software (AI agents?) to look for anomalies. Also words are parsed (scan equivalent to OCR). I understand the idea that if you're in public expect no privacy, but even CNN says: 'Although the state's right to take all necessary measures that it deems necessary is recognized, there is fear that these measures will have a negative impact on basic human rights.'"
If they aren't going to have those buildings under the same conditions of hightened security until they have reliable intelligence that the threat is passed, then they've clearly used the intelligence development as a political attention getter. Why? If they have no reason to think that the attack is immenent, why spend the precious security resources on what is essentially a wild gamble when, a quiet increase in vigilence would not only be far cheaper, but much more effective over a much longer period of time, and hide the quality or inadaquacy of our intelligence gathering abilities from those who would harm us?
They had no information that the attack would happen "soon," but still somehow that was "the day" people should be extra vigilent? And nothing happened.
With information like that the government, through their communications people, should be as accurate and precise as possible about what the threat is, and all that they know about it. Anything short of this, is bullshit, and a waste of time. A hundred or so people are going to die in traffic accidents on any given day anyway, they might be better off with a reminder to drive safe.
Fact is Bush does give a crap about security. Of the billions how many have gone to increasing staffing of border control agents? Hell, just put the national guard out there on live fire training excersises where they just shoot the hell out of anything crossing illegally. That's cheap and politically popular across much of the country. Not so popular in Mexico, or Canada, but they don't do much voting in US elections. Instead Bush wants to give them all drivers licenses. Great. Now the terrorists don't even have to risk forging or bribing people to get needed identification. Way to go Captain Security.
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the world because there never was one to begin with. You can't lose something you never had. We live in a web of interconnecting lives. Our actions have long-reaching effects on others, as theirs do on ours. The idea that a single man may live as a hermit in the midst of the civilized world is both absurd and problematic for being such a popular idea. Privacy doctrine in this country has existed for one purpose: shielding domestic violence from public scrutiny. The whole private-sphere/public-sphere distinction arose so that some men could prevent other men from interfering in what they manage to pull off behind closed doors. Marital rape and worse violences have always been justified as located in the mystical private sphere. As you cling to the arbitrary notion of privacy, you're doing little more than empowering men to rape and torture women. It's time we got rid of the private/public distinction. No one ever had any actual privacy; merely artificially imposed curtains that conceal malicious actions by some against others. If this does anything to undermine public respect for such a morally bankrupt institution as privacy, then I'm all for it.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
Human rights? Oh, spare me. Talk about invasion of privacy if you want, but don't diminish important phrases for the sake of sniping at the people who are working so hard to prevent a terrorist attack.
Have we already forgotten the terrorist attacks at the Munich Olympics of 1972? The explosion at the Atlanta Olympics of 1996? Anybody remember 9/11? 3/11? (Spain) Anybody seen the news lately? No, the one-sided hype on yro.slashdot.org doesn't count.