China Cranks Up Beijing Olympics Surveillance

In September of 1990, Beijing hosted the Asian Games, a sort of regional pan-Asian mini-Olympics. I was living in Beijing at the time, as a student with one of the first international study groups allowed into the country after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Beijing authorities worked feverishly to clean the city in the run-up to the Asian Games, and security was tighter than usual throughout the event. But since there weren't many foreigners living in Beijing at the time, authorities could use low-tech methods of keeping track of them.

Case in point: One afternoon while riding my bike across town, I got a strange feeling that I was being followed. And sure enough, when I looked back every 15 minutes or so, I'd see the same guy riding about 30 yards behind.

This type of surveillance was by no means limited to the Asian Games, and it happened to me many other times afterward. In fact, most foreigners I spoke with who lived in Beijing at the time had similar experiences.

Of course, in 2008, Beijing authorities have more sophisticated means of keeping track of foreign visitors, and are sure to bring these to bear at the Olympics. Beijing has legitimate reasons for doing so, especially after a Monday attack by Muslim separatists in the far western city of Kashgar killed 16 Chinese policemen.

But the Chinese government is also sure to be keeping an eye out for any online pro-Tibet or Taiwan independence activity. The Beijing Olympic Committee has already changed its mind twice about blocking journalists' access to certain Websites it deems sensitive, and last week, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kans., claimed that the Chinese government had installed Internet-spying equipment in all of Beijing's major hotels.

"In some ways, the Internet in China is like a private network, so it's not technologically as challenging to clamp down on things," said Alan Shimel, chief strategy officer at StillSecure, Superior, Colo. "Plus, China has a unique way of still using their abundance of manpower to enforce high tech solutions."

Rich Mogull, an independent security consultant and former Gartner analyst, says China clearly has the capability to monitor everything on the Internet during the Olympics, but could risk their standing in the international community by going overboard.

"Hotels are wired up, and there are going to be video cameras on the streets. It's going to be like the spy movies -- all the stuff you've seen on television is going to be there," said Mogull.