Olympic security nightmare

Athens, we feel for you and your $1.5 billion record security budget. While the Olympics always equals security nightmare, this years games have the most expensive and sizable security apparatuses to date. AP is saying $312 mill is taken up by SAIC's (Science Applications International Corp) system which uses 1,000 high-res infrared cameras to gather images and sound, 4,000 vehicles, 12 patrol boats, 9 helicopters, 1 sensor-laden blimp and 4 central-command centers. The images and audio gathered are matched against speech-recognition and stored images, and also ranked in order of security (eg. sound of car backfiring lower than sound of suicide bomber). The system covers all of Athens, the airport, 9 ports and any other Greek city used in this year's Olympics. The Greek government also expanded surveillance to monitor landline and cellphone calls in all related areas. Though you might mourn the Olympics' Orwellian state, all we need is another 1972-type incident and we'll all be living under that damn perpetual red alert.