A year ago, the head of the Paris Olympics boldly declared that the French capital would be “the safest place in the world” when the Games opened this Friday. With police forces patrolling the streets of Paris, fighter jets and soldiers on standby, and a heavy security barrier of metal fencing erected like an Iron Curtain on both sides of the Seine, the centerpiece of the opening show, Tony Estanguet’s confident prediction now doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
France’s heavy police and military deployment is a major reason the Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11, presents unprecedented security challenges. The city has been hit by deadly attacks by militants and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have raised international tensions.
Rather than build an Olympic Park that clustered the Olympic venues away from the city center, as Rio de Janeiro did in 2016 and London did in 2012, Paris opted to hold many events in the center of the bustling capital of 2 million inhabitants, with others scattered around the suburbs, where millions live. The unprecedented choice to set up temporary stadiums in public areas and hold the opening ceremony across the Seine for several kilometers makes securing the venues even more complicated.
The flagship store is located on one of Paris’ most famous streets and stocks items ranging from 5 euros to 800 euros.
Olympic organizers are also concerned about cyber attacks, and human rights activists and Olympic critics are concerned about Paris’ use of AI-powered surveillance technology and the broad scope and scale of security for the Olympics.
Paris is therefore betting a lot on ensuring the safety of its 10,500 players and millions of visitors. Their objectives are:
Security activities in numbers
Up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, plus 10,000 soldiers, will set up in Paris during the Games in the largest military base since World War Two, able to reach the Olympic venues in Paris within 30 minutes.
Since the multiple attacks on Paris in 2015 by militants claiming to be affiliated with al-Qaida or the Islamic State and suicide bombers, armed soldiers patrolling in cars and on foot have become a common sight in crowded areas in France. They don’t have the arrest powers that police have, but they can catch attackers and hold them until police arrive. For visitors from countries where armed street patrols are not common, the sight of soldiers with assault rifles may be as shocking as it initially seems to the French.
“At first they were very strange to see us and always avoided and bypassed our presence,” said Gen. Eric Chasbeuf, deputy commander of the counterterrorism force (Sentinel).
“Now it’s in the landscape,” he said.
Rafale fighter jets, AWACS surveillance flights for airspace monitoring, Reaper surveillance drones, helicopters capable of carrying snipers, and drone neutralization devices will patrol the skies over Paris. During the opening ceremony, the skies over Paris will be closed with a 150-kilometer no-fly zone around the capital. Cameras combined with artificial intelligence software authorized by a law expanding the state’s surveillance powers for the Olympics will warn of potential security risks, such as abandoned luggage or crowd growth.
France has also received support from more than 40 countries, who are sending a total of at least 1,900 police reinforcements.
Trump assassination attempt highlights risks to Olympics
Lone-person attacks are a major concern, and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump brought this risk home to French authorities.
Some involved in Olympic security expressed consternation that a gunman armed with an AR-type rifle would come within range of the former U.S. president.
“Nobody can guarantee that mistakes won’t be made, but they were quite noticeable there,” said Gen. Philippe Pulquet, who oversaw construction of a temporary camp southeast of Paris to house the Sentinel’s 4,500 soldiers.
In the past 13 months alone, France has seen a series of knife attacks by lone gunmen targeting tourists in Paris and children in parks in Alpine towns. A man who stabbed a teacher to death at his high school in northern France in October was under French security surveillance as a suspected Islamic extremist.
France’s long and bitter experience with deadly extremist attacks has given it a dense network of police units, intelligence services and investigators specialised in counterterrorism, and suspects in terrorism cases can be held for longer periods for questioning.
Hundreds of thousands of background checks were carried out on Olympic ticket holders, Olympic officials and applicants for passes to enter Paris’ most heavily secured area along the Seine. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said background checks had prevented more than 3,900 people from attending. Some had been flagged for suspected Islamic extremism, left- or right-wing political extremism, serious criminal records or other security concerns, he said.
“We are paying particular attention to Russian and Belarusian citizens,” Darmanin added, but avoided linking the exclusion to Russia’s war in Ukraine or Belarus’ role as an ally of Moscow.
Darmanin said 155 people deemed a “high potential terror threat” had also been barred from the opening ceremony and competitions, and police were in some cases searching their homes for weapons and computers.
He said intelligence agencies had not identified any solid terror plots against the Olympics but “we are watching very closely.”
Critics fear intrusive Olympic security will continue after the Games
Digital rights activists worry that the Olympics’ surveillance cameras and AI systems could infringe on privacy and other freedoms, and target homeless people who spend a lot of time in public spaces.
Sacage 2024, a group that has been campaigning against the Paris Olympics for months, criticized the scope of security at the Olympics, describing it as an “oppressive arsenal” in a statement to The Associated Press.
“This is not an isolated exception in France, but rather something that occurs systematically in host countries,” the report said. “Is it reasonable to offer a month of ‘festivals’ to the wealthiest tourists at the cost of leaving a long-lasting security legacy for all residents of a city and an entire country?”
