Autonomy to power Olympic surveillance: ZDNet Australia: News: Software

By Graeme Wearden, ZDNet UK
26 April 2004

Software from Autonomy will be helping Greek security forces to look for terrorists at this year's Olympic games.

Technology that was originally developed to help companies to organise and access information on their IT systems will play a role in attempting to prevent terrorist attacks on the Olympic Games this summer.

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a US company that has been awarded the contract to provide IT security at the Olympics, signed a deal with UK software developer Autonomy this week.

The software will be deployed by the Greek police to monitor communications traffic for words and phrases that could suggest terrorist activity.

'Autonomy's software will be used to help automate the processes of analysing, routing and delivering content, irrespective of format or storage location, and monitor potentially suspicious activity to help increase the efficacy of intelligence operations,' said Autonomy in a statement this week, adding that 'enormous amounts of data in both English and Greek' would be analysed automatically during the event.

No one from Autonomy was available to discuss the deal in more detail.

Information published by SAIC about the system it's developing for the Games, which is called C41, suggests that the Greek authorities will be monitoring communications traffic carried by Internet service providers and telecommunications companies. "