Dahlia Lithwick at The National Post describes the militarization of the creepy, totalitarian London Summer Olympics (July 27, 2012 – August 12, 2012):

“At the London Olympics, we’re seeing unprecedented restrictions on speech having anything to do with, erm, the Olympics. There are creepy new restrictions on journalists, with even nonsportswriters being told they should sign up with authorities……….

…Spectators have been warned they may not “broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet,” making uploading your video to your Facebook page a suspect activity. Be careful with your links to the official Olympic website as well.

..Know that wherever you go and whatever you do, you will enjoy, at the Olympics, “the biggest mobilization of military and security forces seen in the U.K. since the Second World War.” According to a report by Stephen Graham in the Guardian, “More troops — around 13,500 — will be deployed than are currently at war in Afghanistan. The growing security force is being estimated at anything between 24,000 and 49,000 in total.

Such is the secrecy that no one seems to know for sure.” There will be an aircraft carrier docked on the Thames, surface-to-air missile systems and a “thousand armed U.S. diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80-million, 5,000-volt electric fence.”

Throw in the new scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, and disease-tracking systems that will long outlast the games, and you have a sense of what’s to come in terms of big public events.

Protesters, participants and citizens aren’t parasites or background noise. Addressing threats of terror or real violence is one thing. Treating all speech and protest and media as inherently dangerous and violent is something entirely different. Brandishing the wrong sign in the wrong place isn’t protest, and brandishing the wrong French fry in the right place isn’t dangerous. Corporate cleanliness is just a short hop from corporate godliness, and by then it’s much too late for speech.”