Olympics brings 'largest peacetime security operation in French history'
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00:00Now, as I mentioned, securing the games remains a major headache for French authorities.
00:05To talk more about this, we can bring in Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Dalton.
00:09His latest piece is titled Threats to Olympics Turn Paris into an Open Air Fortress.
00:15Matthew, great to have you here on France 24.
00:18Now we have some 45,000 police and gendarmes who are set to be deployed tomorrow for the
00:25opening ceremony.
00:26In addition to some 18,000 troops, we have river patrols, we have divers, sniffer dogs.
00:33Is this normal for a whole city?
00:36No, it's absolutely not normal.
00:41This is the largest peacetime security operation in French history.
00:49This is a far larger security deployment than the London Olympics, which is the last Olympics
00:54in Europe.
00:56So this is a really extraordinary effort by France.
00:59It's a country that has been scarred by mass terror attacks in years past, eight, nine
01:07years ago.
01:10It's a country where there are frequent protests.
01:13There's still concerns about Islamist terror threats.
01:17And there are also the wars in Gaza and Ukraine that security experts say have magnified those
01:24threats.
01:26So France feels it has a lot more to worry about than countries that have hosted the
01:29Olympics in the past.
01:31And Matthew, what kind of attacks are the authorities worried about?
01:34Is it just terrorism, or are they also bracing themselves for things like cyber warfare?
01:40Well, cyber attacks are in fact one of the big things they're prepared for.
01:46The tickets for these games are exclusively electronic.
01:49So if something happens with the electronic ticketing system, it's going to stop everybody
01:56from getting their tickets.
01:57So they really have to be careful about that.
01:59There was a cyber attack in Korea in 2018 for the Winter Olympics that really disrupted
02:05the opening ceremony.
02:06So it's been shown to have happened before.
02:10Hackers have shown they can do it, so they are prepared for it.
02:14Yes, and another threat that they are concerned about is state-sponsored sabotage, principally
02:23by Russia, but also perhaps countries like Iran.
02:29This week, they actually arrested a 40-year-old Russian citizen who authorities worried was
02:35planning some kind of disruptive act.
02:38We all know about the geopolitical tensions between France and Russia, between Europe
02:41and Russia.
02:42So they are concerned that the Kremlin is going to try to embarrass France by disrupting
02:46the games.
02:47Maybe not a terrorist attack, not something that would kill a lot of people, but something
02:51that would embarrass France so that they aren't capable of managing the games.
02:55And I read somewhere that we have foreign armed police officers who are actually on
03:02the streets of Paris right now, from Brazil and South Korea, for two countries that have
03:08sent them.
03:09What exactly can these police officers do?
03:11Do they have jurisdiction to arrest someone or search somebody's bag?
03:21Well, I think they can search people's bags.
03:23I'm not sure about arresting people.
03:25I think in France, that formal authority would still fall to French police.
03:28The Americans are also sending police officers.
03:32The departments of Los Angeles, Fairfax County and New York City have sent officers.
03:37So that just speaks to the size of the security deployment that France believes is necessary
03:44to really secure these games.
03:45One of the things that stands out about the games and the way France is playing them is
03:49that they want the games to be integrated into the cities.
03:55So they don't want them walled off somewhere outside of the city.
04:01They really, really want them to be part of the city of Paris.
04:05And so they're trying to have an open games.
04:11And for that, they need a lot of security, given the threats out there.