With the sports world’s recent focus on police violence and racial justice there must also be a focus on other issues that surround almost every major sporting event: policing and security. Sports enterprises that claim to support anti-racism must be pushed to take steps away from overpolicing and towards divestment from intelligence technology apparati that reflect the most draconian elements of capitalist security governance.

Analyses of the relationship between intelligence services and sport point to a deliberate omission from mainstream security and sports discourse. These nascent examinations suggest a fully developed relationship between the two that has become inseparable (and deliberately kept in the shadows) in the wake of 9/11, and a process by which civilian and securitized life have become intertwined

  • Kinetix
    1·
    4 years ago

    Huh, thank you for posting this. I’ve only given it a cursory glance at this point, but wanted to quickly say that, just on policing alone, I think we’re all going to want to start taking a look at how much money and effort is being put in to it. When policing is a bigger budget item than all other social services, I think there’s something wrong.

    However, I have more to read here about what’s going on with it and sports.

    • mkulima@baraza.africaOP
      1·
      4 years ago

      I found the article quite unique for covering a topis a lot of us associate with entertainment and not surveillance. A lot of focus outside of Canada too – Tokyo, Greece olympics etc.

      • Kinetix
        2·
        4 years ago

        OK, now that I’ve read it, there’s several items in there that aren’t talked about enough. There were a couple of items it touched on that were part of why I wasn’t interested in the Olympics coming to Vancouver and area. The article didn’t really touch on the point of how much money people spend on their precious sports teams tickets, and really don’t think about it enough. Now one really should think about how much of that ticket price goes in to way over the top security nonsense.

        • mkulima@baraza.africaOP
          2·
          4 years ago

          Ticket price as a direct contribution to (in)security capitalism – I had not thought about that. I also this topic of sports and surveillance will keep getting messier with health passports being used as sports venue admission requirements.