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PARIS − It could be the initial sparks of, say, a fire. Or someone appearing to flash a weapon. Maybe a vehicle enters an area that’s closed to traffic or a crowd suddenly rushes forward.
These are some of the potential danger signs French authorities will be watching for with the help of artificial intelligence at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Powerful security cameras positioned at Olympic sites and AI-assisted software will be used to detect trouble in real-time.
Organizers of one of the world’s most-watched sporting events have planned an extensive security operation targeting threats including extremist plots and cyberattacks, civil unrest and opportunistic thieves. The effort may see extra scrutiny after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Authorities are trying to “strike a balance” between keeping people safe and making the games accessible and fun, said Camille Chaize, a spokesperson for France’s interior ministry.
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The French security net involves special anti-terrorism measures and legislation, tens of thousands of extra police and military personnel, and heightened patrols near landmarks and tourist sites.
“We’re quite satisfied with how it’s been going so far,” Chaize told USA TODAY.
Behind that confidence lurks the dark memory of past mass casualty attacks in France and elsewhere.
In 2015, Islamic State militants killed 150 people in one night of carnage in Paris. Some 86 were murdered the next year in Nice when an ISIS-inspired attacker plowed a 19-ton truck into a crowd on the French Riviera. In 2017, a lone gunman rained fire onto an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, murdering 60 and wounding more than 400.
The “threat matrix” facing the Games − terrorism, cyber-attacks, protests − are all areas “the French are well acquainted with,” a U.S. security official told USA TODAY. “With the coming of the Games, it becomes an issue of scale − the fact that there is just so much to protect.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the security mission.
France has been at its highest level of terrorist threat alert, known as Emergency Attack, since October 2023 when a French national with apparent ties to Islamist extremism murdered a teacher in the northern city of Arras. In May, a police said they’d foiled an attack planned by a Chechen teenager. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said the suspect had planned an “Islamist-style” strike on a soccer stadium during the Olympics.
To be sure, protecting Paris is a tall order.
Even under normal circumstances, tensions between the police and some neighborhoods and a tradition of aggressive street protests make France prone to civil unrest. As a perceived standard bearer of Western secular liberalism, the nation is also a prominent target for Islamist terrorist attacks.
With the world watching, France will combine well-worn policing techniques with the latest technology.
By the time competition starts, up to a million people will have had their backgrounds checked for any links to Islamist extremism or far right- and left-wing radicalism. Many of them are ordinary Parisians who live or work in buildings that line a four-mile stretch of the Seine River, where about 90 boats carrying athletes through the heart of one of the world’s most magnificent citries will be paraded during the Games’ opening ceremony.
Around 35 security boats will accompany the athletes. Police and military snipers will line the route. The river-ceremony is an Olympics first. The Trump shooting, at a July 13 campaign event, illustrates the challenges of securing an event in a dynamic public setting
Yet the threats are also harder to predict.
Cyber-defenses at France’s intelligence and security agencies have been primed to track and thwart a multitude of malicious actors who may seek to cause confusion − or worse − using tools from cheap drones to social-media-amplified disinformation.
Labor, social justice, environmental and Middle East-connected protests, not uncommon in Paris, will be confined to specially designated zones − or so authorities hope.
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AI: tracking ‘unusual patterns’
One area of Olympics-related security that’s been getting attention is France’s use of AI to help ensure the safety of the estimated 15 million people expected in Paris for the Games.
AI’s impact is being felt across different sectors and industries. Its use at the Olympics is perhaps the most high-profile example yet of how it’s being deployed to detect security threats. In the U.S., various laws at the state and local level have sought to regulate AI’s facial-recognition capabilities.
French law completely prohibits the public use of facial-and-biometric-recognition technology − something the AI-enhanced algorithmic video surveillance cameras deployed around the Olympic sites in Paris are capable of delivering. But AI will be used in Paris even if it’s not, according to the government, tracking specific individuals.
That’s a scenario, rights groups caution, that could lead AI to be used to infringe on civil liberties.
Mathieu Zagrodzki, a security expert at CESDIP, a criminal justice research center at the University of Versailles, said the AI cameras in Paris will be confined to Olympic sites and won’t be used in public spaces more generally.
He said they will track crowd movements, suspicious luggage and − most controversially because it raises questions about what kind of behavior counts as “normal” − what he characterized as “unusual patterns” of activity.
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“If, for example, there’s a line moving in one direction and there’s a person moving in the opposite way. Or maybe there’s a person going forth and back. Or standing in a single location for quite a while,” said Zagrodzki, who also acts as a consultant to French police.
“Similarly,” Zagrodzki added, “if there’s a brawl or something like that, that will generate an alarm that will catch the attention of whoever is operating one of those AI cameras” so they can assess its significance.
Chaize, from France’s interior ministry, said French law allows police to “experiment” with AI surveillance, but the law does not extend to facial recognition and the trial is due to end next June.
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She said the law permits authorities to use the AI cameras to monitor for eight “specific events.” These include fires, if someone appears to have a weapon and if a vehicle is spotted going into a zone closed to traffic.
“It enables us to identify possible problems and send a patrol to see what’s happening,” said Chaize.
Chauize didn’t respond when asked if the assassination attempt on Trump had caused French officials to alter Olympic security plans.
‘Cops but also diplomats’
While French authorities have overall responsibility for security at the Games, national governments will be protecting their athletes and citizens.
Team USA has one of the largest delegations to the Paris Games. Nearly 600 athletes will represent the U.S. across 31 of the 32 sports on the program in Paris. They will be accompanied by U.S. Olympic officials, coaches, doctors, support staff and family. Representatives from the Games’ U.S. corporate sponsors, visiting lawmakers, celebrities, sports fans and U.S. tourists will also be flocking to Paris.
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Much of that American protection will be coordinated through a security hub at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in a wood-paneled room that, when USA TODAY visited in June, had the look and feel of a college library.
There, special agents from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, working alongside representatives from all the major U.S. security, defense and intelligence agencies, will be managing agents embedded with U.S. Olympic sports teams, sharing information and intelligence about threats with their French counterparts and helping to coordinate the emergency response in the event of a security incident or attack.
“We are essentially cops but also diplomats,” said one DSS official in Paris who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the role involves sensitive security planning.
A second U.S. security official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for the same reason, said France’s authorities “had learned from” mistakes they made during a May 2022 Champions League soccer final between the clubs Real Madrid and Liverpool. During that event, police teargassed spectators and failed to protect them from gangs who attacked and robbed them at knifepoint.
The State Department’s travel advisory level for France is set at two of four, meaning “exercise increased caution” due to possible threats from terrorism and civil unrest.
The second U.S. security official stressed it was France’s responsibility to secure the Games, saying: “What if there’s a cyber-attack? What if there’s a stabbing in the metro? The French have their plans in place.”
French security officials believe elements associated with Russia could launch cyber-attacks because of its support for Ukraine, impacting public transportation, energy and even banking services. But what happens online may be harder to police.
Andrew Obadiaru, chief information security officer at Cobalt, a cyber-security firm, said big events like the Olympics are “prime targets” for social media-fueled misinformation, disinformation and deep fakes.
Obadiaru said that information Olympic attendees find on social media could lead them to believe, for example, that an event is canceled. AI might even be used to alter completely what an athlete appears to be saying.
“Don’t necessarily take at face value what is pushed to your social feed,” he cautioned. “Especially if it appears to be significant. Don’t immediately react off of it. Exercise some skepticism.”
AI: security friend or foe?
Still, Shawnna Hoffman an expert on AI at Guardrail Technologies, which helps companies, governments and police control how they use AI, thinks France should be using more of the technology’s potential. She said it’s not facial recognition that is the problem but a lack of safeguards.
Hoffman said, for example, that border protection programs in the U.S. take photos that are immediately deleted and that the AI cameras in Paris could be set up to do something similar.
“What if facial recognition spots someone on a terrorist watch list and so is able to stop a massive bombing?” she said. “They are trying to manage the technology itself instead of the outcome.”
Zagrodzki, the security expert, said there is at least one “positive thing” about the security situation in Paris. “The Olympic crowd is not a difficult one,” he said.
“It not Serbia playing England in a soccer game,” he said, referring to those nations’ reputations for fan hooliganism. “It’s a compliant crowd. Families. People who want to see Paris. I don’t think fans of Bulgarian Olympic weightlifting will be looking to pick fights with fans of that sport from Kazakhstan.”
