In football, it's the job of the offensive line to protect its quarterback. At the Super Bowl, federal agents and security specialists will be guarding the public from any blind sides.
They will be using technologies designed to keep an eye out for signs of danger, be it on the ground, in the air or over the Inteet. Social media analysis tools are sifting through public postings on the Inteet for threats of violence, while robots, choppers and an app feed all the threat intelligence gathered by law enforcement agencies into one feed.
As festivities celebrating the golden anniversary of the NFL's big game kick off this week from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, high-tech tools will be essential to preventing danger. Organizers are billing the game as the most technologically advanced Super Bowl ever.
Security cameras in and around Levi's Stadium will be put to full use during Super Bowl 50.
James Martin/CNET
The FBI has created a Joint Operations Center, running 24/7 from an undisclosed location in Mountain View, Califoia, roughly six miles from where Super Bowl 50 will be played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Nearly two dozen federal, state and local public safety agencies are working with private security experts at the center, gathering and sharing intelligence in real time.
"We've planned for a number of contingencies and possibilities in case there's any threats to public safety," said John Lightfoot, FBI assistant special agent in charge in San Francisco.
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.
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.
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.
The FBI is particularly worried about these types of "lone offenders," homegrown violent extremists who can often be hard to track. While the offender may tell somebody they want to carry out an attack, they may not give any specific dates or times.
That's where some of the most important safety help won't come from computers, but rather people who call in tips, said Michele Est, an FBI spokeswoman.
"We're doing everything we can on our end," she said, "but sometimes we could use the public's help in those situations."
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