Salt Lake City will soon be seeing more signs of the upcoming Salt Lake Winter Games more than three months before the actual event.
Eleven banners, each measuring up to 141-by-97-feet or nearly half a football field and weighing up to 2,000 pounds and depicting Olympians, will soon be installed on buildings in the city.
The mesh banners will take about five days to put up and will be illuminated at night.
The first, a photograph of a downhill skier, is going up on a downtown building this week.
The 18-month project cost about $1 million, said Scott Givens, director of Salt Lake Organizing committee’s creative group, but he wouldn’t reveal the actual price.
Meanwhile, a new technology will be used at the E Center, site of Olympic hockey. Spectators will be examined with the facial recognition technology used at last season’s Super Bowl.
A dozen cameras for the E Center will be purchased from Pennsylvania-based Graphco Technologies Inc. at a total cost of $25,000.
But because of public criticism of “Big Brother” policing and the large price tag, the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command has been forced to table a proposal that would have used the same technology at other Olympic venues.
Critics say the technology violates constitutional rights.
Carol Gnade, executive director of the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says, “this technology has not proven to work and may bring with it violations of privacy. We’re afraid it may flag huge numbers of innocent people, wasting manpower and resources and creating a false sense of security”.
