From a security perspective, the Beijing Olympics has all the ingredients of a perfect storm. Global tensions are ratcheted up as the US and Russia negotiations about Ukraine’s fate hit a wall. The US and its allies have declared a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics due to alleged human rights violations by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population. These same dissidents are looking at the games as a platform for voicing their grievances.
Adding to the tensions are reports that movements of people in the city, including players and media, are limited under COVID-19 protections. The games themselves are expected to be more opaque than years prior as Beijing has limited foreign correspondents to a “closed loop” bubble. The correspondents are provided with limited interactions with athletes taking part in the games and no movement in the city itself. The athletes are under extra security protocols as officials warn of Chinese surveillance operations that will target them while in the country.
Security analysts from global security operations centers (GSOCs) around the world with assets or people in Beijing during the games are on high alert. They need to monitor incoming information around the clock to anticipate any threats and provide instructions if any security incidents occur.
Surface key insights
For security teams charged with the herculean task of monitoring threats emanating from and against the Beijing Olympics, and its commercial sponsors, Primer Command® is a game changer. Command not only identifies people and places mentioned, but it also shows live feeds of news and social media posts side by side streaming in. This saves analysts from using multiple apps — it’s all in a single pane. Further, this allows them to leverage news reports to corroborate, in seconds, social media posts with alleged threats and emerging issues of importance. With these capabilities in hand, organizations can maximize the safety of their people, operations, and assets.
Primer Command automatically structures and summarizes millions of news and social media posts across 100 languages to surface key people, locations, organizations, topics, suspected disinformation, sentiment, and media to better understand how the situation is evolving.
The following puts a spotlight on the power of Command’s ability to zero in on the information that matters most through advanced filters and AI-enabled classifiers. To learn more about Command’s other capabilities, click here for a free trial of Command for Tactical Insights.
Humanitarian aid filters
Command’s advanced filtering capabilities allow security teams and first responders to unlock mission-critical information during a crisis. Primer’s humanitarian aid filters include drilling down on tweets of displaced people and requests for evacuations, caution and advice, and reports of injuries or deceased people. These filters will be particularly operative during the winter games to zero-in on any violence and safety concerns for personnel there.
Chinese language filters
Learning what is being conveyed to the local population will be more important during the Beijing games given the limited movements allowed for foreign media outlets. Additionally, it will give security teams early indicators of unrest. This filter can also illuminate posts by local nationals – automatically translated – expressing concern about physical security threats.
Additional filters
Command can filter on numerous other entities to drill down into the information security analysts care about most.
- Event Types: Security analysts can filter the information feeds by the event types such as diplomacy, military, or law enforcement topics within news reports. This will prove to be of particular importance if any security incidents break-out during the winter games. Analysts will be able to home in on reporting related to law enforcement to get the latest actions to contain the threat. Focusing on these posts also provides GSOCs with the latest official statements and guidance by security forces for the people in the area.
- Disinformation: Command can detect and flag disputed information in news reports. Analysts can filter by disputed information and use this as an indicator of disinformation campaigns occurring during the events.
- Social Data: Analysts can segment social media data feeds based on the number of likes or retweets, key threat indicators, or even by sentiment. Primer’s state-of-the art sentiment filters are hand tuned for the highest accuracy so analysts can quickly identify the social media posts that matter. By filtering for negative sentiment, analysts can uncover the threats hidden within the deluge of data — separating chatter from hazards.
Learn more
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