http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/newsid=28667.html
 
Vancouver wrapped up in billion-dollar security blanket
By Deborah Jones, AFP Posted Saturday, January 30, 2010 9:47 PM ET
 
Vancouver - With over 15,000 highly-trained security personnel, backed by
a lethal arsenal of military hardware, Vancouver is about to be wrapped in
a billion-dollar security blanket for the Winter Olympics.
 
To battle potential threats from terrorism, crime and violent protests at
the February 12-28 Games, 15,500 police, military and private security
guards have converged on this western Canadian city, said officer Mandy
Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit
(ISU).
 
But the security operation - and its one billion Canadian dollars budget -
has drawn intense criticism.
 
Vocal anti-games protesters say the money should go to social causes like
Vancouver's notorious homelessness problem.
 
Legal activists, meanwhile, say they fear civil rights violations, and
have charged that police tactics of questioning protesters at their work
or while shopping is harassment.
 
Organizers are tight-lipped about specific threats.
 
"We are continually monitoring and examining all potential threats and
risks. We don't elaborate on what information we receive," Edwards said.
 
"We are planning to a medium threat level, and we can ramp that up or
down. The games right now are at a low level."
 
Vancouver's location is a strength and a weakness, said professor Allen
Sens, an international security specialist at the University of British
Columbia.
 
Olympic venues are spread over 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 square
miles), from the urban metropolis of Vancouver to the rugged mountains of
Whistler, 120 kilometres north of here.
 
In Vancouver, squeezed onto a delta between the US border, rivers, ocean
and mountains, security plans call for navy divers, air force helicopters
to transport SWAT teams quickly, surveillance cameras, police dogs,
snowmobiles and even fighter jets -- which the North American Aerospace
Defence Command has said will use "lethal force" if necessary.
 
The ISU's official task is to protect Olympic athletes and officials,
VIPs, nine competition venues and 18 other locations including the
athletes' village and media centres, said Edwards.
 
Everything else remains part of the "urban domain," and will be policed as
usual by municipal police officers.
 
One analyst said the gap between venues and "urban domain" could pose danger.
 
Official Olympic venues will be secure but "all other areas are going to
be completely exposed," said guerilla warfare historian Andre Gerolymatos
of the local Simon Fraser University.
 
"They're assuming if a terrorist attacks, the primary target will be the
Games," Gerolymatos said.
 
But to draw global media attention during the Olympics, "any terrorist act
within Vancouver will do...a traffic jam is a good venue for a terrorist."
 
The budget for games security was pegged at 175 million Canadian dollars
in Vancouver's Olympic bid, but has snowballed to about one billion.
 
"The original estimate for the security cost of the games was a hideous
under-estimate," said Sens.
 
The one billion dollar budget is consistent "with the types of security
mounted at previous Games. Since Munich in 1972 there's been a growing
concern about security."
 
The massive security presence will be hard to miss - not least because of
a white military balloon the size of a car floating 300 metres above
Whistler, where skiing, ski jumping and sliding events will be held.
 
The high-tech balloon can spot objects 32 kilometres away "is designed to
observe the backcountry approaches in to the Whistler Athletes Village,"
police captain Chris Poulton said.
 
Called a Persistent Surveillance Aerostat, or just PSA, "it's a
helium-filled balloon and there's a camera on it, and it's attached to a
ground station monitored by army members," said Poulton.
 
"It helps us be the eyes for the (police)."

Deborah Jones, AFP