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1,000+ US Spies Are Protecting Rio Olympics, Says Report (nbcnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the heightened-security dept.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via NBC News: U.S. intelligence agencies have assigned more than 1,000 spies to security at the Rio 2016 Summer Games. NBC News reports: "The classified report outlines an operation that encompasses all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, including those of the armed services, and involves human intelligence, spy satellites, electronic eavesdropping, and cyber and social media monitoring. Areas of cooperation include vetting 10,000-plus athletes and 35,000-plus security and police personnel and others; monitoring terrorists' social media accounts; and offering U.S. help in securing computer networks, the review shows. 'U.S. intelligence agencies are working closely with Brazilian intelligence officials to support their efforts to identify and disrupt potential threats to the Olympic Games in Rio,' said Richard Kolko, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director James Clapper."

43 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Be aware. We're everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Even watching this comment section. Our diligence knows no bounds.

  2. Fuck Security by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about you hire 36,000 people to clean up the city and the water?

    1. Re:Fuck Security by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Would even benefit the sportsmen. Not just the swimmers and those typically in contact with water. https://twitter.com/ArsalaiH/s...

    2. Re:Fuck Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How about we stop this abortion of a "sporting" event that wrecks the finances of cities which host it.

      Millions spent for two weeks of watching amateurs compete in events that almost no one will remember a month later.

    3. Re:Fuck Security by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. Get rid of the IOC and permanently hold the games in Greece and allow open coverage of the events. Right now the Olympics is just an excuse to funnel gobs of money to a small group of people that have nothing to do with making the olympics successful or worth watching and who despite having this golden goose are so corrupt as to give FIFA a run for their money.

    4. Re:Fuck Security by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 2

      How about you hire 36,000 people to clean up the city and the water?

      Why not do both? Hey all, you cops--when there aren't any criminals to bust, how about you pick up some litter, put it in a trashcan? Maybe one of you knows how to drive a garbage truck? Perhaps haul away some of those piles of trash!

      It doesn't have to be police OR garbage collection, dammit--just have the same people do both jobs!

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    5. Re:Fuck Security by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 2

      I've heard this before and it sounds like a wonderful idea. Plus, that's the traditional way to have the olympics, anyway! Everybody goes to Greece!

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    6. Re:Fuck Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wait, who is "protecting" is back home with all these goons at some corporate event? Why are my tax dollars going to this shit?

    7. Re: Fuck Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is that really a good deal for Greece? Even when venues aren't being used, they need to be maintained. When sports are added to the Olympics, it costs money to build new venues. I'm not sure Greece is in a good position to do that. It helps if other events can be hosted there or the public can use the venues.

      While many people believed that Athens was the right place to host the first modern Olympics, other cities were considered, including London. The Olympics were often hosted to coincide with international expositions like the World's Fair. The 1900 Olympics were chosen for Paris to coincide with the Universal Exposition. The 1904 Olympics were awarded to Chicago, but St. Louis was hosting the World's Fair that year. They threatened to create their own sporting event to upstage the Olympics if they weren't moved to St. Louis. Those Olympics were basically a sideshow to the World's Fair and lasted several months. They weren't particularly successful, but the Olympic park is still around to this day. It's a massive park compared with comparable parks in modern cities. The park is called Forest Park and is now home to many museums. In many respects, the Olympics still serve as expositions to the rest of the world, though it's just not explicit. That's a bit of a history lesson on why the modern Olympics move around and why countries throw so much money at them. In many ways, that hasnt changed in more than a century.

    8. Re:Fuck Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      See, a 1000 spies is going to consist of some regular joe spies, manager spies, supervisor and junor spies. So while the intern spies are probably doing most the work the supervisors stand around looking useless or attend pointless meetings. See, these middle managers are all still doing important spy work by distracting people from the interns while the junoirs tie up the other junior spy agents working for other counties.

      Replicate this with a cleanup crew. You'll get maybe four or five guys with shovels working for a sub-sub-sub-contractor who needs to send everyone to Florida at the last minute to help out with a family emergency. And the supervisors will blow your budget on strategy and optimization luncheons even if the expenses from the senior engineer arguments^H^H^Hmeetings with vendors doesn't.

      You don't actually have to have corruption and criminal intent when you have humans managing humans. Ineptitude at communication alone will grind the most straightforward organization down into a bureaucratic morass. But at least with civic infrastructure you can physically see there is obvious jobs getting done or not.

      I think that the Rio Olympics achived exactly with the city and state governments wanted to do. It gave them a perfect reason to raze the favelas and pretend that homless, imigants and the poor don't happen for a few minutes. At least until a toilet backs up. (From the media reports on water quality it seems it would be hard to tell the difference between a Rio toilet that works and one that doesn't.)

      At least the World could get lucky and half the US intelligence industry come down with random sickness for a month after the games.

    9. Re:Fuck Security by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      So, why do you suppose those cities actually wanted the events? It wasn't forced upon them.

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    10. Re:Fuck Security by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      How many US citizens are attending. Don't they deserve some protection?

      Suppose we didn't and there was an attack, do you believe we wouldn't be sending people in to help? A couple of weeks of prevention is much less expensive than the alternative.

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    11. Re:Fuck Security by GNious · · Score: 1

      Might want to distinguish between "City Officials" and "City Inhabitants" there....

    12. Re:Fuck Security by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Might want to consider that more than half of the cities running the Olympics have turned a profit. Sure there are some notable failures...doesn't make it so for all of them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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      Just another day in Paradise
    13. Re:Fuck Security by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      A distributed Olympics might work better. Have venues all around the world, each hosting one class of sport every four years. No more need for bidding or for holding winter and summer Games at different times.

      Imagine pool sports in Los Angeles, equestrian events in Lexington, golf in Scotland, skiing at Bariloche, cycling in France, marine sports in Vancouver, and track in Kenya - all at the same time.

    14. Re:Fuck Security by Alypius · · Score: 1

      Pfft. That would require that the illuminati and/or clinton foundation actually do something besides install monarchs.

  3. Smarter use of resources: rubber boats and nets by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    If competitor safety was really the priority, wouldn't it be smarter to put them in little rubber boats with fishing nets to scoop the floaters out of the bay?

  4. Start the betting pools by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1

    By the end of the Olympics, how many of those spies will have been...
    1) mugged
    2) murdered
    3) raped
    4) infected with Zika
    5) infected with an STI/STD
    6) infected with something that comes from fecal matter

  5. Brazilian revolt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    20 billion invested with only 4-4.5 billion return, the Brazilian people should get rid of the government stooges who okayed this olympic boondoggle. Oh wait, that's already happening. What a mess.

  6. "vetting 10,000-plus athletes" by Punto · · Score: 1

    I wonder how many of them got denied credentials to participate in the olympics as a result of this vetting. Which is not necessarily bad, except whenever someone wins at any of the competitions, they don't get to say they're the best in the world anymore, they get to say they're the best best out of a hand picked group that was selected for reasons that may or may not be related to their athletic abilities.

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  7. And yet there's already been a shootout by guises · · Score: 1

    Despite all of that apparently there's already been a shootout over a busload of basketball reporters, with six fatalities. Link

    1. Re:And yet there's already been a shootout by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      The 2016 Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin today, but for some it has already began with a bang.

      Good grief. That's rather bad taste considering six people died.

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. Highly classified by rfengr · · Score: 1

    Highly classified...my ass. So how does NBC know about it then, as do thousands of other people?

    1. Re: Highly classified by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It was in hillarys email.

    2. Re:Highly classified by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Because no operation that big doesn't leak out. And, it was likely leaked on purpose.

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  9. Agents aren't spies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Spying" general indicates undercover work. It would be ridiculous to have 1,000 undercover agents for the Rio games. They might be monitoring communication networks, but that can be done from lots of places.

  10. If the US has 1000 Spies in Brazil, by Pauldow · · Score: 1

    Then who's left here in the US to spy on us?

  11. Re:don't question it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They are there to protect Americans. Either from terrorism or street crime.

  12. WTF... by jxander · · Score: 1

    We have 17 intelligence agencies??

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    1. Re:WTF... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      To put it in context, most of these agencies are sub-components of a larger federal agency. The DoD has 9 intelligence agencies, 5 of which are service-specific intelligence arms. While there is some overlap, each of the 17 agencies has a different focus area. You also have the question of Title 50 vs Title 10 authorities which governs what civilian and what military intelligence organizations can do.

    2. Re:WTF... by jeti · · Score: 1

      Office of the Director of National Intelligence

      Independent agencies
      - Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

      United States Department of Defense
      - Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
      - National Security Agency (NSA)
      - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
      - National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
      - Twenty-Fifth Air Force (25 AF)
      - Army Military Intelligence (MI)
      - Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA)
      - Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)

      United States Department of Energy
      - Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OICI)

      United States Department of Homeland Security
      - Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A)
      - Coast Guard Intelligence (CGI)

      United States Department of Justice
      - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
      - Drug Enforcement Administration, Office of National Security Intelligence (DEA/ONSI)

      United States Department of State
      - Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)

      United States Department of the Treasury
      - Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI)

      Source

  13. Re:Not even America by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Given the past support, 1964 Brazilian coup d'état https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    "Is Brazil the target of industrial espionage?" (17 October 2013)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
    US allies Mexico, Chile and Brazil seek spying answers (1 July 2013)
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  14. Re:It's sad to see the Republicans attack... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    Really? How many cheating scandals have there been in the Olympics. I can think of several w/o even doing a search.

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  15. Re: Smarter use of resources: rubber boats and ne by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    I have gone to places where the State Department reached out to me and told me that I was "a fucking idiot.

    Most likely because you didn't pay attention to the warnings they post about the places you went to. If you ignore them, what do you expect them to do for you?

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  16. Re:Not even America by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    So, how many incidents/lives is $12M worth? Even making the announcement that this is going on is a good preventive measure.

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  17. Re:Too bad they can't eliminate the real threats. by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    I can go to nearly any major U.S. city and find those as well. Maybe not to the degree we're seeing in Rio, but let's see how many people come out sick before we cast stones from our glass house.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/24...

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
    Housing is an important determinant of health, and substandard housing is a major public health issue.1 Each year in the United States, 13.5 million nonfatal injuries occur in and around the home,2 2900 people die in house fires,3 and 2 million people make emergency room visits for asthma.4 One million young children in the United States have blood lead levels high enough to adversely affect their intelligence, behavior, and development.5 Two million Americans occupy homes with severe physical problems, and an additional 4.8 million live in homes with moderate problems

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  18. Re:Much ado about nothing by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    BZZZZT! 52% of viewers are between ages 25-54.

    http://hub.coxmedia.com/h/i/21...

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  19. Re:Is anyone watching? by dcw3 · · Score: 2

    You cared enough to whine about it.

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  20. Re:What BS by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    We have fewer than 1000 "athletes" there.

    554 actually. And I'm sure the went all by themselves.

    OOPS....
    Original estimates had about 200,000 Americans expected to attend the Rio Games, but a senior U.S. official said that number is now closer to 100,000

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  21. Re:Watch out for LA by buddyglass · · Score: 1

    LA apparently turned a profit in 1984. But it's an outlier. That article also suggests there's some gain in the host country's equity markets relative to the rest of the world.

  22. You learn something new every day by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    All this time, I thought "Brazilian Cluster-fsck" was just an expression.

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  23. Re:WHO IS PAYING? by ls671 · · Score: 1

    You have to be Donald.

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  24. Re:Too bad they can't eliminate the real threats. by Chas · · Score: 1

    Fuck, they've got CRE down in the water there! Basically it's a bacteria that's resistant to antibiotics that are generally considered "drugs of last resort".

    And while CRE may not kill you itself, if you're a CRE carrier, and something else compromises your immune system, you're in SEVERELY deep shit!

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