be careful what you 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 told The Associated Press.
The system - developed by a consortium led by San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC* - 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.
*The company has worked on a large number of high-profile government projects. SAIC had engineers on the ground in New York the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, deploying point-to-point microwave systems to restore communications to government offices. The company also built the security command center for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Other high-profile projects SAIC has been involved in include the 1993 World Trade Center bombing investigation, the cleanups after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the first Gulf War, and space missions including the Voyager mission to Mars and the Hubble Space Telescope.
A lower profile, but potentially lucrative, project the company is working on for the Army is called the Future Combat Systems program. SAIC teamed up with Boeing to win the right to be lead system integrator on that project, which could have a total value of $4 billion. The program is supposed to completely retool and transform the entire Army to better respond to future threats, including everything from weapons systems to troop training.
SAIC recently had a management change. Founder and chairman Robert Beyster, who had run the company since its beginning in 1969, announced plans to retire in 2004. In October 2003, Kenneth Dahlberg, a vice president at General Dynamics, joined the company as CEO.
Since February 2003, SAIC has been in charge of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, a Pentagon-sanctioned group made up of Iraqis that is effectively functioning as the country's temporary government.The senior members of IRDC hold positions at each of 23 Iraqi ministries, where they work closely with U.S. and British officials, including L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The Council's official task is to rebuild the structures of a government that are expected to eventually be handed over to an independent Iraqi authority. Members of the IRDC are officially employed by SAIC.
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David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector who was hired by the CIA to track down weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a former vice president of SAIC. Kay left SAIC, where he oversaw homeland security and counterterrorism work, in October 2002.
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Just how the company is going about the task of rebuilding Iraq's media and the overall cost remains a mystery, however. The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to release any specific information on SAIC's media reconstruction work, which has been dubbed the Iraqi Media Network. What little information that has leaked out about the SAIC effort has come mainly from disgruntled employees and press freedom advocates, who have charged the company has bungled the job badly.
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*#5 -Top 100 Federal Prime Contractors 2004
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In his current official biography Key is listed as a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies with a concentration on country terrorism and homeland security issues.
Key previously worked at the Pentagon under President Reagan and served as section chief for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration of the UN) from1983 -1991.
After the first Iraq war in1991 , the Bush 1 administration looked for greater validation for their activities leading to the 1992 election. Kay was made chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq. Kay discovered all kinds of �evidence� that Iraq was a hotbed of WMD weaponry, with much of the information coming from �defectors�, many of whom were later discredited. Kay was eventually removed from his UNSCOM position for alleged �unethical behavior�. Though Bush 1 was defeated, the �information� that Key had gathered laid the stage for Gulf War II.
Kay, the Senior Fellow at Potomac and the �former UN Chief Weapons Inspector�, however, had a very interesting interim work period between those more neutral years. He was vice president of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a company with extremely close ties to the Pentagon and to the current Bush administration.
SAIC has had very good luck with the Pentagon. In March 2002 the Bush administration awarded SAIC a massive defense contract potentially worth at least $ 1billion. SAIC also has a �revolving door� relationship with many of its associates coming in and out of the Pentagon. One of SAIC�s associates was Khidir Hamza, the Iraq defector who has consistently testified about WMD in his country. He was also consistently discredited. A senior SAIC associate was, of course, David Kay.
In October2002 , Kay left the SAIC to join the Potomac Institute where he was well positioned to become a more �objective� expert on nuclear weapons for the Bush administration. Kay was then engaged to find the WMD in Iraq after Gulf War II. He stated at the beginning of that mission that he was confident of finding them. Now he says they don�t exist.
So David Kay, long an employee of a major defense contractor friendly to the Pentagon says, �we were almost all wrong� about Iraq�s WMD stockpile and alleged reconstitution of a nuclear weapons program. He goes on to endorse the idea of creating a commission to examine the causes of the intelligence failures but says that the inquiry should be on the intelligence agencies (read CIA) and not on the administration and the offices that were created by the Pentagon to allegedly bypass the normal intelligence assessment process.
Michael Saba
Arab News 14.Feb.04
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