At the Super Bowl, fan safety starts with tech - CNET

So far, he said, there haven't been any major credible threats to the game or to any related activities. "Doesn't mean we think they are going to happen," he said, "but we're ready."

About 1 million football fans will be in the area for the 50th Super Bowl, which is classified by the Department of Homeland Security as a Level 1 Special Event, a possible target for terrorism.

Other countries have responded with extreme measures at similar sporting events, as in 2012, when the British govement put missile launchers on the roofs of a public housing tower and other buildings around the London Olympics. The 2014 World Cup in Brazil brought in security staff of more than 150,000 people, as well as anti-aircraft tanks and surveillance drones.

Zipping up Levi's Stadium

While the FBI declined to offer specifics, we do know that hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes officers will be scouring Levi's Stadium and other Super Bowl-related events, not to mention helicopters hovering on game day and military fighter jets on standby. The stadium's 600 security cameras will closely watch pretty much everything, while the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting flights around the stadium on game day and creating a "no drone zone" that prohibits use of the unmanned aerial vehicles near the stadium.

Robots will be on hand at the game itself and at events in San Francisco, ready to help detect and disarm anything from a backpack bomb to a radioactive device or even a weapon of mass destruction by remote control.

Inside the Super Bowl tech at Levi's Stadium...

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Away from the game, law enforcement agencies will be analyzing data from phone tips, traffic reports, security cameras, officer patrols and social media for any possible terrorist or major criminal activities across the Bay Area.

The agencies are working with a Virginia-based threat intelligence startup called Haystax Technology, which kept an eye on the past six Super Bowls, in addition to doing other govement work. The company's software, called Common Operating Picture for Threat Awareness, or COP, helps interpret the information coming into the secret operations center by aggregating information such as officer or traffic reports. The data is then relayed to the appropriate agency through a smartphone app.

The coordinated data is also displayed on a "Watchboard," a giant digital map inside both the joint operations center and a backup office in Virginia. Currently more than 200 alerts are processed per minute, and about 300,000 day, said Bryan Ware, Haystax's chief technology officer. Those numbers are expected to increase over the course of this week.

Accessing this information in multiple offices is key to safety at this year's Super Bowl, because there are events happening throughout the Bay Area, making it more "logistically challenging" than previous games.

Planning for Super Bowl 50's safety began more than two years ago after Levi's Stadium won the bid to host the big game. After hundreds of meetings, the operation officially started about an hour after last year's game ended. A small contingency of FBI personnel from San Francisco were sent to Arizona to review how security was handled at that Super Bowl.

One incident they looked at was a threat on social media flagged by Haystax software in which a man said he would "shoot the place up." Within an hour, law enforcement officers tracked the man down at a halfway house in another state. "Essentially, the person was lonely and wanted someone to talk to him," Lightfoot said.