BY MICHAEL VIGH
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Fearing a public backlash, security planners for Utah's 2002 Winter Olympics have opted not to use a controversial photo technology -- most recently employed at the Super Bowl -- to hunt for terrorists and other lawbreakers.
The facial-recognition software is designed to photograph spectators and instantly compare their faces to a digital database of known terrorists and criminals.
Civil libertarians dubbed January's game the "Snooper Bowl" and said the technology is Big Brother run amok. Olympic security officials received a slew of negative calls about the system and decided its benefits did not outweigh the tumult, said Utah Olympic Public Safety Command Director Robert Flowers.
Representatives of Viisage Technology of Littleton, Mass., demonstrated the software to security planners last year.
"It's a big political ugly to use that [system]," said Department of Public Safety Capt. Stuart Smith, deputy coordinator of UOPSC. "People feel this is a sporting event and not a national security event." Flowers says the technology could be useful in Games security. However, after getting plenty of unfavorable feedback, he said simply: "I'm not so sure Utahns would stand for something like that."
The software, which was developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, is now exclusively owned by Viisage. It works by assigning a numeric value to every face based on elements such as spacing between eyes, ears and nose. Variants such as facial hair and glasses would not prevent a match in the database.
At the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., cameras were stationed at every entrance and fans were photographed as they walked through turnstiles. Faces were compared to an index of criminals ranging from pickpockets to international terrorists. Civil libertarians have questioned its effectiveness, however, because out of the 71,000 attendees of the game, the system caught only a single suspect -- a known ticket scalper who managed to flee into the crowd.
Carol Gnade, executive director of the Utah American Civil Liberties Union, applauded the decision by the UOPSC. She said the ACLU objects to the FBI storing pictures of innocent people in their files.
"We object to the whole notion of a databank that includes every person that goes to an event," Gnade said. Flowers said the only technology that will be used for Games security is metal detectors. Spectators at every venue, located around the area from Ogden to Provo and from Kearns to Park City, will be forced to walk through magnetometers and be subject to a bag search.
Besides that, good old-fashioned police work will be utilized to try to thwart terrorism and stop crime, he said. "The question is how invasive do you get to protect people," Flowers said. "It won't be any more invasive than a trip to the airport."