ATHENS, Greece – People attending the Olympic Games had best be careful of what they say and do in public.
Software will be watching and listening.
Recent leaps in technology have paired highly sophisticated software with street surveillance cameras to create digital security guards with intelligence-gathering skills.
“It is a very vast network and it is the first time it is being done on such a scale at an international level,” Greek police spokesman Col. Lefteris Ikonomou said.
The system – developed by a consortium led by Science Applications International Corp. – cost about $312 million and took up a sizable chunk of Athens’ record security budget of more than $1.5 billion.
It gathers images and audio from an electronic web of over 1,000 high-resolution and infrared cameras, 12 patrol boats, 4,000 vehicles, nine helicopters, a sensor-laden blimp and four mobile command centers.
Spoken words collected by the cameras with speech-recognition software are transcribed into text that is then searched for patterns along with other electronic communications entering and leaving the area – including e-mail and image files.
The system, which includes components already used by U.S. and British government intelligence agencies, covers all of greater Athens, nine ports, airports and all other Olympic cities.
Ikonomou said it “allows the users to manage a critical incident in the best way possible and in the shortest time possible because they have all the information in front of them.”
The software used for surveillance camera recordings is designed to spot and rank possible risks, said Dionysios Dendrinos, general manager of One Siemens in Greece, one of the companies in the consortium.
“They can distinguish the sound of a flat tire from an explosion or a gunshot and inform the user at the command center of the incident,” he said. “This is also the case with any anomaly in the picture, such as a traffic jam.”
Technology also allows the users of the system at the main command center to save and analyze data from the surveillance network and beyond. And the material from the closed circuit cameras is kept for seven days, Ikonomou said, so specific incidents can be analyzed in depth.
Much of that analysis is enabled by software from London-based Autonomy Corp., whose clients include the U.S. National Security Agency, that parses words and phrases collected by surveillance cameras and in communications traffic.
In June, the Greek government expanded surveillance powers to screen mobile and fixed-line telephone calls during the Olympics.
“It listens, reads and watches,” Dominic Johnson, Autonomy’s chief marketing officer, said of his company’s software. Then it synthesizes. Beyond Greek and English the software understands Arabic, Farsi and all major European languages, Johnson said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.