Surveillance and securitization: A forgotten Sydney Olympic legacy

Sydney 2000: Setting the scene

A growing body of literature suggests that ‘the place of sport within a post-9/11 US [is] characterized by: omnipresent fear; . . . the glaring absence of media security; . . . legal reconfigurations that curtail civil rights, and the militarization of everyday life’ (Falcous and Silk, 2006: 319). But what sport security landscape existed just prior to 9/11, and was it really that different to a post-9/11 world? The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games security concerns and surveillance technologies and practices exemplify how a Western democratic nation, while mindful of its citizens’ civil rights and freedom of expression, still chose to implement increased and at times intrusive securitization to safeguard the Games and ‘protect’ its citizens.

These changes were legitimized, to a large measure, through the introduction of specifically formulated legislation, represented by state of New South Wales (NSW) legislation, such as the Olympic Arrangements Act 2000 and Homebush Bay Operations Act 1999. Sydney’s Olympic security measures were planned for and enshrined in legislation well before the Games. Legitimacy was provided by these Acts to those enforcing them, playing to the contemporary image of Australia as a law abiding country. The effect was one of imposing Games security through hegemony, with only token and sporadic resistance, aligning with Falcous and Silk’s (2006: 323) characterization of Australia as having true neoliberal zeal, being a corporatized civil society, and having ‘shifted toward a culture of fear and patriotic correctness, [with] a complicit and compliant commercial media’.

Achieving general acceptance of Games-related legislative changes was relatively straightforward as Olympic bid organizers had already deflected protests and marginalized negative views about the Games via the mainstream media before the Sydney bid was won in September 1993 (Bacon, 1993). For the most part, Australians allowed that the new and more intrusive measures were ‘needed’ by officials in order for the Games to run smoothly and would not impact greatly on their freedom as citizens. As Real and Beeson (2002: 1) suggest, ‘the dominant discourse around a major international sporting event like the Olympic Games or the World Cup can exert hegemonic force . . . both in the larger ideological context in which the dominant discourse is articulated and in the popular consciousness which engages with and is shaped by that discourse’. This aligns with the view of Coaffee and Rogers (2008: 102) who note that ‘attempts to create safe and secure city spaces through physical and technological changes at specific sites have often been supported by a range of legislative powers and regulatory guidance which appear to not only target criminal or terrorist activity, but also to control and dispense particular activities deemed ‘‘unacceptable’’’.

The hegemonic acquiescence of Australians to Sydney’s bid promises provided substantiation to the IOC that in general Australians were willing to support the authorities’ various security initiatives and provide a safe Games’ environment. Sydney’s bid documents had included guarantees of ‘effective, friendly, and unobtrusive’ safety and security from the nation’s Prime Minister, the host state’s (NSW) Premier, and both the federal and NSW Commissioners of Police (Toohey, 2002: 1). Undeniably, Sydney’s bid was strengthened by the perceived political stability of Australia (Cashman and Hughes, 1999). This was important as, since the 1972 Munich Games and the Black Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes, guarantees of security and safety for athletes, officials, and spectators had become critical for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Games Organizing Committees (OCOGs) (Toohey and Taylor, 2008). Notably, it has been contended that the Olympic Games are terrorists’ number one sport target (Coaffee and Rogers, 2008).

The Sydney Games required the largest security operation in Australia’s history (Grono, 2004), with security preparation commencing in earnest in May 1995 (Webb, 2001). The Olympic Co-ordination Authority (OCA), a NSW government department, was initially given primary accountability for security, as well as the construction of Olympic facilities. OCA then established the Olympic Security Planning Group (OSPG) which assumed responsibility for security planning. The OSPG was renamed the Olympic Security Command Centre (OSCC) in 1997. The OSCC’s Games security remit extended from traffic control to counter terrorism. Located at Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) headquarters, the OSCC held the status of an independent police command (Toohey, 2002).

The Sydney Olympic Games implemented a totally integrated security system and it was the first Olympic city to create a central database of all security-related incidents during the lead up to and for the duration of the Games (Australian National Audit Office, 1998). While OCA had responsibility for Olympic security planning, Australian intelligence personnel, the military, and state and federal police were also involved (Lenskyj, 2000). During the Games, the NSW Police Commissioner had final responsibility for all Olympic security, including Australian military personnel, who were under police command by agreement. Thus, the Police Commander had the authority to exercise command over the entire state of NSW in security and safety matters (Toohey, 2002).

Security and safety measures

Recent Olympics have been challenged by security threats ranging from terrorist groups through to the actions of individuals (Johnson, 2006). How various governments at different times have reacted to these threats has been obviously influenced by their particular geopolitical context. Countries which have responded by ‘monitoring and expelling known sympathizers before events are held’ have provoked widespread criticism (Johnson, 2006: 13). While the Sydney approach was not so draconian, its organizers still believed in a pre-emptive strategy of ‘it may be better to act before disaffected groups can pose a coherent security threat’ (Johnson, 2006: 22). Overall, Games organizers maintained that their approach was a relatively low key one, rather than one that utilized unconcealed and intrusive security measures (Toohey, 2002).

The approach to Olympic security involved a strategic process of reviewing recent Games to identify potential threats. Resources were then allocated to prevent similar incidents. As a consequence, Australia’s planning aimed to prevent any reoccurrences of situations such as the Atlanta and Munich Olympic attacks (Johnson, 2006). Although some of the increased safety measures for the 2000 Olympics resulted in security at levels above those normally associated with Australian sport events, many of the precautions were designed to be inconspicuous and therefore were not openly subversive of lawful freedom of expression. The use of sophisticated technology, such as closed circuit television cameras (CCTVs), in greater concentrations than was normal for Australia, minimized the need for large numbers of armed guards (Toohey, 2002). This covertness was relative to the times: post-9/11, the changed approach to security provision has meant that even in relatively safe countries such measures are now more openly displayed during mega events, as they provide a security-accepting public with a sense of being protected (Toohey and Taylor, 2008).

The 1996 Atlanta Games pipe bomb explosion meant that sponsors’ exhibits, presentation areas, livesites, and parks where the public gathered to celebrate the Olympic experience were considered to be just as vulnerable to terrorism as Olympic stadiums and also needed to be protected (Toohey and Veal, 2007). Consequently, Sydney’s Olympic security plans were reviewed in terms of preventing a similar incident and improving authorities’ responses. The result was a ‘root and branch’ review of security that culminated in a significant increase in the scale and complexity of Sydney’s security arrangements (Johnson, 2006). While this met with the approval of the IOC, other Olympic authorities, and most Australians, there was not unanimous support for the escalation in security measures. Civil libertarians argued that the changes meant that in the years leading up to the Olympics police were virtually given arbitrary powers and that Australians’ basic right to freedom of assembly in the host city was suspended. Significantly, some of the new measures were continued beyond the Olympic period (Public Interest Advocacy Centre, 2000).

All Olympic volunteers and OCA and SOCOG staff were subject to probity checks (including this article’s authors). Opponents of this process included the NSW Privacy Commission which considered the Attorney-General department’s background security checks on Olympic volunteers to be excessive and discriminatory. For example, the over representation of Indigenous people in the Australian justice system meant there was a greater possibility they would be rejected as volunteers on security grounds (Lenskyj, 2002).

Potential threats

While the security risk for the 2000 Sydney Olympics was generally regarded as low by experts, there was not total agreement on potential or source of threats. One reason for the predictions of a low security risk was that in international terms Australia, by and large, was deemed a low security threat (Williams, 2000). This was based partly on the lack of local political unrest and absence of large numbers of terrorist operatives or supporters residing in the country. Additionally, it was believed that Olympic organizers’ well publicized counter-terrorism precautions and security measures in place would deter any terrorists considering an Olympic strike (Hope, 2000). It was acknowledged that transnational groups, such as the Al-Qaida network; regional organizations, such as the Abu Sayyaf Group; or anti-Western groups, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, were capable of conducting major terrorism acts against the Olympics (Hope, 2000). A counter suggestion was that any Olympic terrorism would more likely be domestic than international (Wakim, 1999). The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) threat assessments predicted that a lone Australian ‘seeking revenge against a society enjoying itself at the Olympics was a greater threat than that of religious or political extremists’ (McPhedran, 2000: 4).

Notwithstanding the low security threat assessments, before the Games there was scaremongering that Australia would be a terrorist target during the Olympic period. Some Games’ critics alleged that this supposed threat was driven by the authorities (Wakim, 1999). For example, the Australian Attorney-General had predicted that ‘these events [the Olympic Games] could provide an international stage on which some groups could seek to advance their cause through acts of violence’ (Williams, 2000). The Olympic security chief Paul McKinnon, responsible for OSCC’s control and security arrangements, spoke publicly of security plans to counter any threats, including an attack from weapons of mass destruction (Jones, 1999). Such pronouncements strengthened the authorities’ case for constructing and, in some cases, retaining post-Olympics the legislation designed to prevent attacks, and also provided the legitimacy for increased securitization.

Legislation

Standard public order offences, including using indecent or threatening language within Australian sports grounds, were in place for a number of years before 2000. However, Olympic legislation took security measures much further to the extent that some argued it significantly infringed upon the democratic right of public assembly outside sport venues while dramatically increasing the powers of police and other designated officers in significant public places in Sydney and beyond, without safeguards or accountability against the abuse of power (Cunneen, 2000).

The Sydney Olympic legislation that markedly increased police power to control public behaviour and peaceful protest was consistent with worldwide securitization changes to policing that had begun in the 1980s and which reduced opportunities for free speech and public assembly (Lenskyj, 2002). Notably, mega sport events have often been accompanied by suppression of public protests and enhanced police powers, to the concern of civil libertarians (Johnson, 2006). Australia had experienced this previously, in 1982, before the Brisbane Commonwealth Games when the Queensland State Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, had enacted legislation in an attempt to keep the city free of protest about Indigenous rights by giving police unprecedented powers to seize persons and property. As a consequence, police harshly repressed protestors during the Brisbane Commonwealth Games (Booth and Tatz, 1994).

The security preparations for the Sydney Olympic Games also extended to enacting legislation to prevent protests. In the lead up to the 2000 Games the NSW Police Commissioner refused to authorize several protests and impacted others, including changing the normal route of the innocuous International Women’s Day march (Lenskyj, 2002). It was ‘apparent that the authorities were not preparing simply for terrorism, but for the wider civil unrest that the police forces may prove unable to quell’ (Head, cited in Ricketts, 2002: 135). This fear of civil unrest relates specifically to the implementation of the Homebush Bay Operations Act (HBOA) 1999 and Homebush Bay Operations Regulation 1999. The Act provided for the development, management, and regulation of designated land at Homebush Bay and other Olympic event sites. The Act and Regulation remained in operation until 31 March 2002, well beyond the 2000 Olympic event, when they were renamed with the Games’ provisions remaining. The HBOA gave the OCA the right to appoint enforcement officers with powers exceeding those normally held by police. The enforcement officers could: use reasonable force to remove people, prevent the distribution of materials, ban people in areas under their control, search people and their possessions, and demand proof of identity (Head, 2000). Neither the Act nor the regulations issued under it specified any qualifications needed by these enforcement officers.

The HBOA had covered a number of public areas across Sydney that staged Olympic sports including Bondi Beach, Centennial Park, Randwick, Bankstown, the Nepean River at Penrith, Sydney Harbour, and Darling Harbour. If an alleged offence occurred outside an Olympic venue the Act was less stringent, requiring the enforcement or police officer to first request a person to leave the Olympic precinct and warn them that failure to do so was an offence. If a person tried to resist they could be charged with both resisting an enforcement officer and assaulting an enforcement officer, consistent with NSW public order policing where it is customary to charge offenders with offensive language, resisting arrest, and assaulting police (Saul, 2000).

The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority Act 1998 (SHFAA) criminalized participation in an unauthorized public assembly in the Sydney Harbour foreshore and CBD. The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority was given the power by the SHFAA to authorize public assemblies and the conditions on which they could be held, including what days and times (Saul, 2000). A number of traditional Sydney gathering places for protestors were covered by the Act, as were other venues, some up to 10 kilometres away from the harbour (Lenskyj, 2002: 55).

The SHF Authority could appoint rangers who were given the power under the SHFAR, similar to the HBOA, to remove anyone by ‘reasonable force’ (Walker, 2000: 1). It was easy to contravene provisions of the regulations given the range of seemingly innocuous prohibited activities they included, such as using skateboards or similar equipment, collecting money, or even sleeping (Public Interest Advocacy Centre, 2000). The SHFAA effectively criminalized homelessness on the Sydney Foreshore and venues away from the harbour (Saul, 2000). Thus, the additional move on powers granted to police officers and rangers via the SHFAR was similar to the HBOA.

Critics argued that a comparison between Olympic legislation, such as the HBOA and SHFAA with the NSW general public order legislation, demonstrated how Games’ legislation was primarily designed to deal with public protests and other forms of social and political unrest rather than terrorism per se (Head, 2000). Another viewpoint was that a lot of the legislation changes ‘simply provided legal conditions for long-standing street policing practices’ (Lenskyj, 2002). The existing legislation had required tangible obstruction, harassment, or intimidation to occur before being invoked, whereas the Olympic legislation lowered this threshold and authorized personnel needed only to interpret the behaviour as an annoyance or inconvenience before taking action (Saul, 2000).

Despite the increased police powers over public behaviour ‘there were relatively few instances where police, security, or other authorized officials abused the powers granted to them’ (Lenskyj, 2002: 65). This was fortuitous for the community as the Olympic Arrangements Act 2000 (OAA) had granted various immunities to a number of Olympic personnel with the exception of personal injury claims (Saul, 2000).

In addition to these NSW state legislative changes, the Australian federal government also used the Olympics to enact legislation which allowed the military to be used in the case of domestic unrest (Head, 2000). Through the Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to Civilian Authorities) Act 2000 the federal government was permitted to use military personnel without consulting states in a wide range of circumstances. The primary justification given for the Act was fear of terrorism, but again some commentators suggested the real impetus was concern about Olympic related domestic protests (McCulloch, 2001), as the nature of such legislation made ‘it apparent that the authorities were not preparing simply for terrorism, but for the wider civil unrest that the police forces may prove unable to quell’ (Head, cited in Ricketts, 2002: 135). Critics argued the amendments to the 97-year-old Act established a new political and legal basis for using troops to suppress political disturbances, undermining the principle that the Australian Defence Forces should not be used against civilians. Furthermore, the ‘shoot to kill’ provision of the Act protected Australian Defence Force personnel from prosecution for homicide (Lawson, 2000) and gave the military greater power than the police in relation to civilians, including being able to search premises without a warrant and detain civilians without arrest (Lenskyj, 2002). Thus, federal Olympic security legislation also set a precedent and provided the basis for future use of ‘military aid to the civil power’ (McCulloch, 2001: 28).

As seen by the range of enacted legislation, both the state of NSW and the Australian governments’ securitization of the Sydney Games increased restrictions on Australians and granting additional powers to various enforcement agencies. As mentioned previously, not all these powers ceased at the conclusion of the Games.

Both the Australian Defence Minister and Attorney-General identified ‘security’ and ‘general support’ to NSW police as the primary areas where there would be military involvement in securing the Games (Moore and Williams, 2000). As it turned out, the military involvement also involved surveillance.

In early 2001 the Sydney Morning Herald reported undercover SAS troops had helped police with crowd surveillance during the Games. This breached rules regarding the military’s role in civil affairs. While Australian troops can be used to help police in non-emergency law enforcement, they are required to wear uniforms and can only be used when there is no likelihood that they will be required to use force. However, according to Defence Department briefing documents, during the Olympics troops were approved to use force in self defence or to help defend police under attack. Operational approval was given by the Chief of the Defence Force, but neither the Minister for Defence nor Federal Cabinet members were aware of the undercover operation until a senior military officer reported it to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (Lague, 2001).

Surveillance

The expansion of surveillance measures requires public support, or lack of effective political opposition. However, even though mass public surveillance devices, such as CCTV, have been portrayed as the icon of totalitarianism, there is little opposition to their installation and many of those which are installed for special events remain until they are replaced by more sophisticated models (Haggerty and Gazso, 2005). Undercover surveillance on people and organizations had previously occurred in Australia but was an uncommon practice. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and state police intelligence units began monitoring individuals and groups in 1997 in preparation for the Olympics. By February 2000, people involved in anti-Olympic protests were concerned about surveillance by intelligence agents infiltrating their workplaces and meetings and tapping their phones (Lenskyj, 2002). This surveillance was not secret, as a list of organizations being surveilled was published in the Sydney Morning Herald in late July 2000. The list included ‘the Anti-Olympic Alliance (AOA), Aboriginal activists, Greenpeace and Jewish Australian survivors of the Maccabiah Games bridge disaster’ (Connolly, 2000: 4).

While surveillance is increasingly more common, the first barrier to dissent is said to be a projected image by authorities of absolute orderliness (Martin, 2002). In this respect the Sydney Olympic precincts and the city’s public spaces were planned and managed with precision. The NSW Police spent AUD$34.7 million on new surveillance equipment for the Games. The equipment included sophisticated offender databases, infrared surveillance cameras, CCTVs, and increased lighting throughout the CBD (Kennedy, 2000). Sydney also introduced, and kept after the Games, sophisticated computer networks to support the surveillance data. The Olympic Precinct and Regional Operations (OPRO) centre utilized up-to-the-minute technology which centralized operational information through radio communication, CCTV, audio conferencing, surveillance, and satellites (Toohey, 2000).

The Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) was chosen to operate security systems (Samatas, 2007). Olympic venues’ electronic surveillance accessed every seat, and Sydney Olympic Park (SOP) was purpose built for effective crowd control. There were approximately 100 CCTVs in the SOP precinct alone to monitor the crowd. This allowed OCA rangers and police to be guided rapidly to any incidents and also to pre-emptively remove potential trouble-makers. It also meant that there was not an overwhelming presence of armed enforcement personnel. While there were numerous Olympic personnel in view in public spaces outside the venues, mostly they were there to make sure people knew where they were going, rather than as an obvious mass of guards with guns (Martin, 2002). This meshed well with the general belief that Australians would not want an overwhelmingly overt security presence. Nevertheless, because of the use of technology, state surveillance of individuals in many areas of Sydney was doubled during the Olympics (Saul, 2000), and at the nation’s borders ‘intelligence and law enforcement played very key roles . . . tracking individuals, making sure they knew who was coming into the country, and monitoring any threats’ (Hauer, 2001: 21). One of these threats was the possibility of a terrorist attack, as had occurred at the Games in Montreal in 1972 and Atlanta in 1996.

Terrorism

Since the 1970s terrorism has been used as a major justification for increasing states’ coercive capacities (McCulloch, 2001). In 2000, both the federal Australian Attorney-General and Minister for Defence claimed there was ‘no specific threat of terrorism related to the Sydney 2000 Games’ (Moore and Williams, 2000). The NSW Police Commissioner agreed, however he noted that while ‘there is no specific threat against the Olympic Games itself or against Australia . . . we have to keep our eye on threats against particular countries who are in conflict with another country who might want to import their brand of terrorism here’ (Jones, 1999).

In March 2000, national intelligence agencies advised the media they had identified groups linked to Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to the Games (Head, 2000). Despite the story’s source stressing the threat was low the articles appeared on the front page of two major newspapers (see Daley, 2000a, 2000b). Public relations tools were utilized to alert the people of Sydney, Australia, and overseas to the new strict security measures, as Olympic organizers believed it would act as an expectation management disincentive (Hauer, 2001). However, Lenskyj (2002) believed both the police and media were also deliberately creating prospects of violence to justify the new security measures.

The NSW Police strategy became public knowledge through the leaking of a letter from the NSW Police City Central Inspector, David Darcy, to a member of the NSW Parliament. Referring to the Olympic Impact Coalition’s (a community organization which campaigned against the Games’ social impact) reluctance to talk to police before taking ‘non-violent direct action’, in the letter Darcy warned that ‘silence is a form of violence’ and police ‘may act inappropriately’ to non-violent protests. Paradoxically, he claimed that this would be due to the police’s lack of previous experience dealing with non-violent protests. In a display of unfortunate use of English, Darcy wrote ‘I hope that as we get closer to the big sports carnival, we can develop this relationship further’ (Bacon, 2000: 3).

Discourse about the threat of violent protest and police methods of dealing with it continued in the weeks leading up to the Games. In August 2000, under the headline ‘Anarchist protest plan revealed’, police continued to propagate their message of not tolerating violent unlawful activity while not seeking ‘to impede the conduct of peaceful and law-abiding demonstrations in public areas’ (Clennell, 2000: 4). An earlier story, published in the Sydney Morning Herald in late July 2000 cited Olympic security police sources alleging ‘extremists and anarchists’ from the US and the United Kingdom were expected to be in ‘Sydney on the opening day of the Olympics’ (Connolly, 2000: 4). Concerns were also voiced about the volatility of 10,000-plus protesters heading north to Sydney after the S11 meeting in Melbourne claiming, ‘nobody really knows how they will react or what they are capable of’ (Connolly, 2000: 4). The assertion that some of these demonstrators were travelling from overseas framed them as outsiders, with potential to undertake ‘unAustralian’ actions (Lenskyj, 2002). ‘A lot of overseas people are going to be causing all sort of problems . . . We’re preparing just in case. Officials warned that ‘‘you’ve got to keep the buggers under control’’’ (Ham, cited in Lenskyj, 2002: 38). The Commander of Military Special Forces, Brigadier Philip McNamara also issued, ‘a warning to anybody who wants to interfere with the Olympic Games: we will interfere with them’ (Chulov, 2000: 1). The day before the Games Opening Ceremony the NSW Premier acknowledged that people had a right to protest against the Olympics, but cautioned that anyone impeding the Games would ‘see out the Olympics period enjoying the splendid comfort of the Central Industrial Prison at Long Bay’ (Martin, 2002: 33).

These statements conflated legitimate protest action with terrorism. The securitization of the Games proved to be an effective and ongoing strategy to shore up public support for the Games and concurrently lessen support for protest groups.

Conclusion

Before the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, sports ground-specific legislation was already in place in Australia to control crowd behaviour at events. The Olympic legislation and security infrastructure took these measures much further, resulting in increased securitization through surveillance of the public within and outside Olympic venues. Legislative and surveillance infrastructure remained in place after the Games. Such control measures are indicative of terrains of local and social liberty struggles for neoliberalism, whereby nation state citizens are increasingly deprived of the power to shape or control basic freedoms of daily life.

In the case of the Sydney 2000 Games, Australia approached the provision of security with a heightened sense of protectionism and a more globally attentive perspective. Concerns for safety of the spectators and participants were expanded beyond the local context and extrapolated from and into the global stage from which Sydney would host the Olympics. Securitization arguments made by authorities ranged from protection of persons to protection of the Australian image. As a result, surveillance, technologies, and procedures employed to control people, information, and objects were expanded. The new Olympic legislation was significant for its intensified and broadened military, police, and security officer powers and for its consistency with the neoliberal globalization approaches lauded by successive Australian governments since 1983. The use of a legal and technologically driven agenda approached securitization within a relatively homogeneous collective.

The increased surveillance and security measures were the strictest in peacetime Australia, yet ultimately there was very little dissent about the growing encroachment on citizens’ freedom. The reasons for this appear to be fourfold. First, Australians are passionate about sport and thought that hosting a successful Olympic Games would bring the nation international prestige. Increased security was largely accepted as part of the price to be paid for this. Second, since the time of the bid, the majority of the media was pro Australia’s Olympic involvement (although at times critical of Olympic organizers). Third, the security changes were enacted through legislation, which could be considered as hegemonic in the Gramscian sense of combining an ideological vision of that which is largely accepted as common sense and in the nation’s best interests. Last, while security was tightened and surveillance of public spaces increased, it was still relatively unobtrusive and was conducted with increased use of technology rather than by armed personnel (Toohey, 2010). The changes brought about hegemonic acceptance for the need for more intrusive safety measures, some of which have lingered long after the Games. Societal acceptance of these measures was bound in the social construction of the Sydney Olympics as an exemplar of Australian civility, nationalism, and inclusivity.

The suggestions that a host city can and should continue its Olympic connections through an Olympic legacy have increased in prominence in recent years in Olympic circles. As Gold and Gold (2008) noted, legacy is an evolving concept that may not have even been considered in the original vision of an Olympic Games. Legacy can have tangible and intangible, intended and unintended, outcomes. Sydney’s Olympic securitization and surveillance remain a part of Sydney 2000’s less well-known Olympic legacy. The security hardware remains outside Olympic venues. As some Olympic legislation did not cease when the Games concluded, Sydney’s Olympic legacy also included increased government intrusion into civil liberties.

Since the Sydney Games, securitization has become de rigueur in Australian sport venues. This has occurred through measures which range from state-based security policies to increasingly security conscious event precinct design, to progressively intrusive crowd management practices at the event. Olympic security and surveillance entrenched a greater acceptance of enhanced sport security practices through a hegemonic approach (Taylor and Toohey, 2010). Given the increased security measures implemented at global events since 9/11, the Sydney Olympic changes may seem minor in comparison. However, Australian authorities used the opportunity to increase security measures that survived long after the event was over and any potential threats associated with it dissipated.