According to a report from the Agence France Presse (AFP), Russian authorities plan to monitor virtually all communication at the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi and, as you may have guessed, none of it will be overseen by a court.
Dubbed SORM, the system will give Russian security services free access to all phone and Internet communications at the Olympic Games in February without the providers’ knowledge, according to research by Soldatov and his colleague Irina Borogan.
Telecom providers are required to pay for the SORM equipment and its installation, but law enforcement agencies will be able to wiretap without having to show providers court orders allowing the eavesdropping, the analysts said. [...]
“There is a promise that visitors will have access to the fastest WiFi networks in Olympic history, for free,” the researchers said on their website agentura.ru.
But at the same time, the analysts said, national telecom provider Rostelecom is installing DPI (deep packet inspection) systems on all its mobile networks, technology which will allow the FSB not only to monitor all traffic but also to filter it.
I would expect any nation hosting the Olympics to take steps to provide security, including monitoring communications, but what makes this remarkable is that the country setting up this system is the new home of a man who made a name for himself by blasting supposed invasions of privacy and internet snooping.
Russia is even going to deploy drones(!) to monitor the Olympics.