London Olympics drawing on successful RWC security
massey-university
Wed Jul 25 2012 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
London Olympics drawing on successful RWC security
Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 11:20 am
Article: Massey University
Op-Ed from Nick Nelson, Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Massey University
July 25, 2012
London Olympics drawing on successful RWC security experience
Kiwis watching the security headaches currently affecting the pending London Olympics can be grateful our own Rugby World Cup tournament went ahead as smoothly as it did.
In fact, members of the London Games organising committee were quietly observing the massive but largely unnoticed security operation that helped ensure the success of the RWC.
They will have taken away numerous lessons that will undoubtedly be incorporated into the massive security operation unfolding in London.
The British government is undertaking one of the most significant security assignments ever conducted on its shores to provide protection to the 17,000 athletes and almost 11 million ticket holders that will attend the games.
The threats to Games security are real and numerous. They a have been broadly categorised by the Home Office into five areas. These are terrorism, serious and organised crime, domestic extremism, public disorder, and major accidents and natural events.
The eleventh hour admission by private security company G4S that it would be unable to fulfill its contract to provide more than 20,000 trained staff, presents a further logistical challenge. It has led to another 3500 military, in addition to the 17,000 already seconded, to be enlisted into the security detail. With another 1200 placed on standby, this will see more military personnel deployed than are currently serving in Afghanistan.
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Not surprisingly, terrorism remains the core focus of concern. Since the Munich games in 1972 and particularly since the September 11 2001 terrorism attacks in the United States and London underground and bus bombings of 2005, security planning for the games has been a priority.
But preparations ensuring a safe and secure games do not come cheap with almost £1 billion being spent on security alone.
A significant portion of this cost will be on security staff and the Metropolitan Police will coordinate a group of almost 50,000 from its Lambeth control room. In addition to the heightened military presence, this also includes 9,500 police staff, and almost a thousand US security staff from the State Department and FBI.
Working quietly in the background, more than 3,500 staff from MI5, SIS, and GCHQ will provide crucial intelligence support. These security forces powers have been significantly enhanced with the introduction of legislation which provides them with broad, potentially invasive, powers.
Beyond this, more covert security measures have been put in place. In true big brother style London, already one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the World, is having a range of new technological security measures put in place.
Thousands of facial recognition and number plate recognition CCTV systems will provide targeted information to the control room, and embedded radio frequency identification tags in event tickets will allow holders movements to be monitored. Intelligent passenger surveillance systems, which overlay live surveillance camera feeds onto “ideal’ images, will alert security forces to any suspicious activity, such as discarded luggage at underground train stations or games venues.
Games organisers have also invested heavily in cyber security to protect their own information systems from the expected attacks which, if the Beijing Olympics is anything to go by, could amount to 12 million attempted hacks per day.
When the experience the British have in hosting these types of events is combined with the massive security operation that has been put in place, it is reasonable to expect that while there will undoubtedly be security incidents, these will be relatively minor and likely be conducted by rogue individuals who lack the capability or sophistication to carry out a major attack.
In that sense, there is every likelihood that games security will achieve its stated intent of “providing a safe and secure environment free from a major incident resulting in loss of life”.
But at what cost is this occurring? In a country already paralysed by massive welfare spending, spiralling unemployment and rising social problems, the United Kingdom is becoming an increasingly insecure environment.
There is a certain irony then in the fact that the population now has to pay for a security operation of unprecedented scale which, along with other expenditure on the games, is contributing significantly to national debt.
Longer term, this cannot be good for the country. Indeed, in 2004 the cost of security, as part of the overall games cost, has been shown to be a significant contributor to the financial crisis that Greece now finds itself in.
One can only wonder whether the cost of hosting and providing security to the Olympics will make them possible in the future.
ENDS
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