Security and Surveillance in the Athens 2004 Olympics

This article demythologizes the expedient and costly operation for a “superpanopticon” in the Athens 2004 Olympics, the first Summer Olympic Games after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Olympic industry, reflecting international and interconnected political—economic, governmental, and corporate interests, exploited real and perceived terrorist threats to prescribe extremely high security requirements. The Athens 2004 Olympics was used as a testing ground for the latest antiterrorist superpanoptic technology, which crucially failed to work. The central surveillance integration security system (C4I), planned by Science Applications International Corporation, could not be implemented on time for the games; hence, the security of the last Athens Olympics was dependent on conventional means. Using primary and secondary sources, the article inquires into the interesting and troublesome story of the deficient electronic surveillance system, which became a technological nightmare. It raises serious skepticism about the real antiterrorist efficiency of high-tech surveillance systems.

[1]  R. Pound.  Inside the Olympics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Politics, the Scandals, and the Glory of the Games , 2004 .

[2]  Stephen J. Schulhofer.  The Enemy Within: Intelligence Gathering, Law Enforcement, and Civil Liberties in the Wake of September 11 , 2002 .

[3]  H. Hiller.  Toward an urban sociology of mega-events , 1999 .

[4]  Mun-Cho Kim,et al.  Surveillance Technology, Privacy and Social Control , 2004 .

[5]  Alistair Kelman,et al.  Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century , 2000, J. Inf. Law Technol..

[6]  Ulrich Beck,et al.  The Terrorist Threat , 2002 .

[7]  J. Tirman.  The maze of fear : security and migration after 9/11 , 2004 .

[8]  R. Ericson,et al.  The surveillant assemblage. , 2000, The British journal of sociology.

[9]  M. Degen.  Barcelona’s games: the Olympics, urban design, and global tourism , 2004 .

[10]  Minas Samatas.  Studying Surveillance in Greece: Methodological and Other Problems Related to an Authoritarian Surveillance Culture. * , 2002 .

[11]  Roger Clarke,et al.  The Digital Persona and Its Application to Data Surveillance , 1994, Inf. Soc..

[12]  B. Simon.  The Return of Panopticism: Supervision, Subjection and the New Surveillance , 2002 .

[13]  Heung-soo Park,et al.  Global television and the politics of the Seoul Olympics , 1993 .

[14]  D. Lyon.  Surveillance after September 11 , 2001 .

[15]  Sport and the Transnationalizing Media Corporation , 2003 .

[16]  R. Warren.  City Streets – the War Zones of Globalization: Democracy and Military Operations on Urban Terrain in the Early Twenty‐First Century , 2008 .

[17]  Stephen Graham,et al.  Spaces of Surveillant Simulation: New Technologies, Digital Representations, and Material Geographies , 1998 .

[18]  G. Armstrong,et al.  The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV , 1999 .

[19]  M. Poster.  The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context , 1990 .

[20]  Kirstie Ball,et al.  The Intensification of Surveillance , 2007 .

[21]  Gary T. Marx,et al.  What's New About the "New Surveillance"? Classifying for Change and Continuity. , 2002 .

[22]  K. Abe.  Everyday Policing in Japan , 2004 .

[23]  D. Lyon.  Surveillance society: Monitoring Everyday Life , 2001 .

[24]  M. Real.  The Postmodern Olympics: Technology and the Commodification of the Olympic Movement , 1996 .