It’s a big year for America. It’s the semiquincentennial, otherwise known as America250, and the United States is cohosting the World Cup. But spectators at these events — and the millions of people who live in the cities hosting them — may not realize that they, too, are being watched.
From Kansas City to New York, the US cities hosting the World Cup have been ramping up their surveillance capabilities in the months leading up to the tournament. Security measures are at an all-time high in Washington, DC, which isn’t hosting the World Cup, but is home to a series of spectacles this summer. The Fourth of July festivities in the nation’s capital will have an unprecedented level of surveillance. Law enforcement agencies say they can’t take any risks during these once-in-a-lifetime events — but privacy advocates warn that some of this surveillance won’t be limited to this summer’s celebrations.
Both the Fourth of July fireworks on the National Mall and the July 19th World Cup final in New Jersey have been designated National Special Security Events (NSSE) by the Department of Homeland Security, the most stringent security designation the agency gives. This isn’t unusual for major sporting events — the Super Bowl is always given an NSSE designation — but it’s a first for the Fourth of July. The UFC fight at the White House in June was also an NSSE, as was the official UFC watch party on the Ellipse.
Attendees at the Fourth of July fireworks show on the National Mall will have to pass through airport-style security checkpoints and won’t be allowed to bring folding chairs or coolers. Counter-drone measures will be in place, The Washington Post reports, as will bomb technicians, countersnipers, and medical personnel from several federal agencies. While attendees will notice these security measures, others could be close to invisible — including camera networks that track their biometrics.
The measures at the National Mall appear to be a response to criticisms of lax security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was infiltrated by a gunman who allegedly shot at a Secret Service agent.
There will be similar measures in place at the World Cup final, which Donald Trump is expected to attend — and where he will reportedly present the trophy to the winning team.
“This is going to be security-o-rama regardless of whether the president goes,” Jules Boykoff, author of Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine, told The Verge. “If the president goes, that’s just an extra lacquering of security.”
Boykoff, a professor of political science at Pacific University, said there may be an increased ICE presence at the World Cup final as well, and pointed out that ICE arrested rapper 21 Savage at the 2019 Super Bowl — another NSSE — claiming he overstayed his visa.
Anne Toomey McKenna, an attorney who specializes in privacy and biometric surveillance, said the NSSE declaration may also make it easier to justify collecting communications data under the looser standard of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, instead of the more stringer requirements of the Wiretap Act.
Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House task force for the World Cup — and son of Rudy Giuliani — has said there will be heightened security at all the World Cup matches, even the ones Trump doesn’t attend. “You’ll have multiple perimeter checks from security. You’ll have checks while you get onto public transportation to make sure you’re a valid ticket holder,” Giuliani told the Atlantic Council’s Frederick Kempe. “Soccer fans — or futból fans — they generally like to come to stadiums late, in the 15, 20 minutes or so before the game.” But Giuliani said ticket holders should know that gates open three hours before kickoff and plan to arrive early so they don’t miss kickoff.
The surveillance isn’t limited to one-off events and in fact involves building up a massive apparatus across the country. Through FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security gave $250 million in grants to states that are hosting World Cup matches, much of which was used to buy counter-drone equipment, according to The New York Times. The FBI has also been training local law enforcement agencies on drone mitigation. According to Giuliani, the Fan Fests in all 11 host cities will be covered by counter-drone technology. It’s unclear whether these cities are using the same tech that led to an airspace closure in El Paso earlier this year.
This is going to be security-o-rama regardless of whether the president goes.
New York City — technically one of the host cities, even though the matches are taking place across the river in New Jersey — spent $6.5 million on counter-drone technology. In Kansas City, Missouri, authorities have confiscated at least 16 drones since the World Cup began.
“The general rule with the World Cup and Olympics is that local and national police forces use the sports mega event like their own private cash machine,” Boykoff said. “The World Cup creates a state of exception that allows for all manner of securitization processes.” And in many cases, once these tools are in place, they remain. Paris, for example, enabled AI video surveillance ahead of the 2024 Olympics — and is keeping it in place through the end of 2027 despite privacy concerns.
Similar camera systems have been installed throughout the US ahead of the World Cup, even in areas far beyond stadiums. Kansas City also planned on putting cameras equipped with facial recognition on some city buses, even though the state government refused to fund the project over privacy concerns. The city initially went through with the program anyway, saying it would help identify missing persons and could thwart human trafficking attempts during a major international sporting event. City officials said that the images captured are checked against active missing persons alerts and only retained if there’s a match.
“Privacy is always a tricky thing,” Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, told The Washington Post. “We’ve always had cameras on our buses. It’s just new technology. I think in time it’ll smooth over and people will realize, ‘Well, it didn’t really feel any different.’”
The cameras aren’t operational yet because of backlash and technical delays, but Kansas City plans on implementing the program later this year — even though the World Cup will be over by then.
The America250 celebrations will be monitored by thousands of law enforcement officers, including National Guard troops and FBI agents, many of whom will be wearing body cameras. Several cities have expanded or reactivated CCTV systems ahead of the World Cup. Seattle reportedly reactivated dormant cameras after FBI and Seattle Police Department officials briefed the mayor on “credible threats” during the games.
McKenna said the increase in surveillance at these events isn’t unwarranted given the increased level of risk, but said there’s an issue with how biometric data is gathered and retained. McKenna noted that British Columbia, which is also hosting the World Cup, has regulations around how long surveillance footage from matches and other events can be retained — rules the US lacks.
Though CCTV has been around for decades, advances in camera technology — and AI integrations — have made these systems incredibly sophisticated. Early footage “told us a lot about what was happening, but it really wasn’t that different from what a police officer standing on the street could see themselves,” McKenna said. “That’s how the law in the US reached the conclusion that CCTV systems are okay — because it happens in a public space, so there’s no real reasonable expectation of privacy risk under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
But cameras reach much farther than they used to — they can tilt, pan, or zoom, and can often see several miles away. They can be equipped with thermal imaging devices and facial recognition technology, all of which may be accessible to law enforcement. Some AI software can even analyze people’s facial expressions and claim to predict a person’s behavior, McKenna said.
“We have increasingly advancing AI systems with analytical capabilities that can merge so much data and detect things from the footage that before we wouldn’t know,” McKenna said. “An officer on the street wouldn’t be able to identify every person walking by, but facial recognition technology software is very common, and it can be utilized together with the footage that is being taken and collected by CCTV systems.”
All of this information can be sent to federal fusion centers, where information is shared between local law enforcement and federal agencies like ICE and the FBI. McKenna explained that when there’s more information-sharing between local law enforcement and federal security agencies, “we lose control over how that information is used.”
“That’s part of the protection we’re supposed to have under our laws — that information that’s been collected for national security purposes not be used for domestic law enforcement purposes,” McKenna said. “We have increasingly seen a blurring of national security measures becoming part of domestic law enforcement.”
There are still a couple weeks left in the World Cup. But there’s no telling how long all the surveillance data gathered around the matches will be stored, or how it will be used.
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