A Few Words about Security at the Olympics
Has Italy done enough to provide security for the Olympic games?
The question is no easier to answer than the unanswerable: how long is a piece of string? How much is enough?
Security spending since the Munich games, acknowledged to be the start of the modern terrorism era, shows skyrocketing costs along with increased sophistication in surveillance. This is likely to end in Torino. Unlike Athens, which requested and received assistance from NATO and the U.S., Italy is largely using its own police forces to provide security for the games.
At the media village where I stay, a clot of police constantly crowd the entrance, five or six of them usually. Credentials are checked closely before we enter and as we leave. At night, helicopters with spotlights criss cross the skies overhead. Sewer and other service accesses are clamped shut.
Each morning in an unheated tent on the path to the media center I must strip off my coat and put it through the Xray machine along with my bag containing camera, lenses and laptop.
This morning all bags were opened and inspected by hand, in addition to the Xray inspection.
At the media center, Credentials are checked each time I move from one part of the building to another. Trim men in black with discrete ear buds lurk conspicuously.
Have they missed anything?
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More on Olympic Security: DiManno: Italy insists XX Games secure
Comments
security will work. Like it worket for the pope funeral, the tsunami. Other things will not work, for example the heating at athlests village….But we are italians, attentions is on important things, and may be we necglect others
Once again I’m utterly disgusted with the political comments made by the TV commentators as they view the athletes entering the stadium. Also the denigrating remarks about the nations with small contingents of athletes: “They only won two medals at Salt Lake.” Who the %@^!!! do they think they are anyway - if they had any ability they would be out there competing, not sitting in the wannabe seat in a TV studio.
Simply amazing !!
20 minutes into Olympic coverage and NBC has already screwed it up horribly. NBC has the opportunity to start their Olympic coverage with the dramatic opening ceremony and the instead they show a dry, boring interview. I sat down my three young kids to watch the opening ceremony and have them witness a historical international athletic event. Instead we were all bored by 8:15. My wife left the room and the kids are know watching an Arnold movie instead of the Olympics. Way to go NBC, you have really out-done yourselves. We are all angry and “out” for the remainder of the Olympic. If you screwed up the opening, we are certain NBC cannot provide good coverage of the rest of the games.
Bye bye for three weeks.
The Adamowicz Family
Orange , CA