When the Olympic flame is doused on Sunday, we know the cheers will quiet, the athletes will move on and fans will go home. But will Big Brother stay behind?

Every Olympics host city goes through it: the Olympic hangover. When the athletes step off the medal podiums, the city must clean up, pay the bills and figure out how to monetize a series of shiny new venues. The most important decision, however, might seem much more subtle: What happens to all those new security cameras and other surveillance technologies that were installed for the Games? Privacy experts fret that, as with Athens, Beijing and Vancouver, the Olympics means a steep ratcheting up of security that never really gets ratcheted down.

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"It would be a tragedy if the most visible legacy of the Games in London was a huge increase in the amount of surveillance people are subjected to in their everyday lives," said Nick Pickles, director of London-based Big Brother Watch.

Host cities tolerate massive shows of security that would otherwise be unimaginable. In London, which already has more CCTV security cameras than any other city in the world, 2,000 new cameras were installed in the Olympic Village, while nearly 2,000 more were installed around the city, according to Big Brother Watch. License plate recognition systems have been installed throughout London. There are even surface-to-air missiles atop apartment buildings and more military troops on the ground than Britain has in Afghanistan. An $877 million effort, it's been called the largest peacetime deployment of security forces in history, but the question remains: Will there be mission creep? How much of that infrastructure and the public’s newfound tolerance for being watched will remain after the Games are finished?

Earlier this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an analysis of all recent Games and says the results are disheartening.  It should come as no surprise that the Beijing Summer Games were used as an excuse to install thousands of cameras that are still in operation, said the report’s author, Rebecca Bowe. But other cities have suffered similar fates, too.

"The Games bring a legacy that lives well beyond the prestige," Bowe said. "We've witnessed time and again, the security infrastructure lives on well beyond the Games."

Concrete concerns
The concerns aren't merely theoretical. Athens officials installed about 1,000 cameras for the 2004 Summer Games. In 2007, Greece amended its national data protection law to exempt the cameras; Greek privacy commissioner Dimitris Gourgourakis resigned over the incident. The cameras have since been used during protests following economic unrest there.

More Olympics coverage in London 2012: Hosting the Games

The Olympics has a long-running legacy as a massive security event, which long pre-dates post-9/11 terrorism concerns. It dates at least as far back as the Munich Summer Games of 1972, when a security breach contributed to the kidnapping of Israeli athletes from the Olympic Village; 11 were eventually murdered.  But even before that event, the Olympics were never free of international politics and the real possibility that some group might use them to violently make a point.

No one disputes the need for heightened security during the Games, but is the installation of security infrastructure, and the culture that comes with it, a one-way street? Can a security state be dismantled? Or are the Games a Trojan horse that allows those with a heavy-handed security agenda to gain the upper hand?

Olympic security plan transforms London into fortress

"The equipment has been bought and paid for. The real risk is they simply leave it in place and turn it over to local authorities, and by the back door, we have a huge increase in surveillance," Pickles said. "Government officials have made assurances that some of it is temporary, but they haven't said what."

Already, whiz-bang security technology in London has proven tempting to local authorities. Pickles pointed to minutes from a recent borough council meeting in Newham, just east of London, where officials openly expressed desire to buy Olympics surveillance technology after the Games end.

Alfredo Lopez, founder of the international privacy advocacy organization MayFirst/PeopleLink, said it's very difficult to reverse the Olympics security buildup.

"There is no way these guys are going to take down those cameras, especially with all the social unrest there," said Lopez, who is based in New York.

Lopez, a professed lover of Olympic sports, said the security issue threatens to squander any of the goodwill gained by the otherwise-peaceful international gathering.

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"I happen to believe, and I know this is corny, (that) the Olympics is one of the greatest things the human race does, so why do these bastards pervert it with their repressive attitudes?" he said. "How can you run a principal event of goodwill and friendship, then at same time, on top of buildings you have missiles? It's totally incongruous. It's very, very disturbing and contradictory to the Olympic spirit. It ruins the whole thing."

'It softens people up'
One fundamental problem of the Games is that they are used as an "obvious show of military capability," Lopez said, with host nations using the occasion the beat their chests about their powerful ability to respond to threats. But Pickles is worried about a much more subtle issue: Residents get used to the trade-off between privacy and heightened security practices, and their tolerance level is slowly raised, leading to fewer objections to police tactics.

"The danger is it softens people up to the next step," he said.

The next step is Brazil in 2016, where circumstances on the ground dictate what will almost inevitably be an even stronger implementation of security force and technology. (Privacy advocates are too pessimistic about the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, to use those games as a battleground.) An active battle between paramilitary police forces and organized crime means residents are used to compromised civil liberties, and even before the 2016 Games, Rio de Janeiro will host the World Cup in 2014. Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks suggest that U.S. government officials have encouraged use of additional surveillance tools by the Brazilian government, as well as a partnership with U.S. security agencies.

As a result, market research firm 6Wresearch predicts the market for security cameras will nearly quadruple, to $362 million, by 2016.

By then, Pickles warns, people have another element to worry about: increased sophistication of technologies like facial recognition. Londoners, for example, would almost certainly not tolerate a permanent military presence in the city. But as police gadgets get smaller and smarter, they also become less visible.

"It's getting more discreet, even as the processing power is getting more powerful," he said. "It's becoming much more clandestine, ... which means people won't object to it as much."

Looking to Vancouver
Brazil and London might be able to learn something from Vancouver's experience after the 2010 Winter Games. Western Canada has an active civil participation culture, and even before the Games began, Canada's privacy commissioner warned about mission creep in Olympics security plans.

"The right to privacy must be upheld, even during mega-events like the Olympic Games, where the threat to security is higher than usual," Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard said in a speech delivered before the Games calling for dismantling of surveillance technology after the Games. "Will the residents of Vancouver and the lower mainland wind up living surrounded by an array of surveillance systems that they neither want nor need?"

Partly as a result, most of the 900 video cameras installed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were removed after the Games. About 75 were left behind for use by the Vancouver police, said Adam Molnar, who is studying the Olympics security effect as part of his Ph.D. work at the University of Victoria.

"British Columbia civil liberties associations put pressure on the Vancouver Police Department, which was in negotiations to keep the cameras up," he said. Even some of the remaining cameras were turned off, only to be used in crisis situations, he said.

On the other hand, analysis of Vancouver's post-Olympics security hangover is muddied by the fact that in the spring of 2011, there were major riots after the Vancouver Canucks lost hockey’s Stanley Cup final. City officials have successfully turned to Twitter and other social media tools that deputized people to help identify criminals during the riots. Given the embarrassment over the riots, many residents were eager to help.

"That turns out to be an alternate route to (security) cameras everywhere," Molnar said.

The most lasting legacy of the Vancouver Games, Molnar said, was not police gadgetry, but rather reorganization of the police force into small, nimble anti-riot teams that share some characteristics with paramilitary teams.

"The extent that militarist ideal supplants community-based policing, that should concern people," he said. "And any time you have a deepening of integration between civilian and military police, like you have now in London, that's disturbing."

Molnar felt confident that Vancouver's security experience offered some hope to privacy advocates in London and Rio, however.

"You can look to Vancouver as a positive example of an active civil liberty and political community that tried to engage the government around privacy and surveillance issues, and that did earn some small victories," he said. "In many ways it's forced policing agencies to respond to public debate. ... There's certainly a need for informed civilian oversight."

'Mega-events'
But Bowe, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she's worried that the Olympics will continue to be abused as one of a list of "mega-events" that give officials permission to tighten the security screws until tremendous power is concentrated in small government forces.

"The march toward a militarized, urban future will continue apace unless people push back," she said. 

And Lopez sees little room for hope at the moment.

"My general worry as a human being is about the setting up of apparatus of police states in all of these places," he said.

Even those who have faith in the good intentions of their current government are being short-sighted, he warned.

"The (U.S.) and some of these places are not a police state now. But the problem is if the apparatus is set up, it could be easily be Nazified and turned on people. ... If there's a history to the world, it's that certain small, elite groups of people usurp and pervert the great works of the majority of humanity, like the Olympic Games, for nefarious and selfish purposes."

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VANCOUVER -- "I NEED TICKETS" screamed the signs hanging from the necks of the scalpers, in the style of a homeless person asking for a handout or a hitchhiker looking for a ride to Manitoba.  They meandered in and out of the crowd in Vancouver's Robson Square, the center of Olympic fan activities in the host city.

You've seen this scene before, but its overtness – taking place right outside the official ticket pickup location -- was striking.  Scalping must be legal in Canada, eh?

I love ticket scalpers. As people they are often slimier than moss-covered rocks.  But as a student of markets and consumer behavior, they provide me with endless hours of amusement. Ticket scalping is one of the purest forms of a true marketplace you'll ever find -- buyers and sellers negotiating under extreme time pressure, both saddled with limited information and high risks, bidding on a commodity that is both perishable and scarce.  Fifteen minutes before game time, this market is extremely efficient.

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Event holders hate scalpers, of course. They say they are trying to protect consumers from fraud. Counterfeits happen, as do lies about seat location, but given the complete anonymity of the transactions, I'm constantly amazed at the relative lack of fraud in scalping.  While related, scalping (a secondary ticket market) and fraud (counterfeit tickets) are really different problems.  In reality, I think promoters are just jealous. When scalpers sell tickets at well above face value, they embarrass promoters by revealing that the tickets were underpriced.

Naturally, the more amateurish the ticket buyers, and the more professional the sellers, the more money the scalpers make. And the more anonymous the transaction -- say, the more distance between hometowns of buyer and seller -- the easier it is to run a scam.

That brings us to the subject of Olympic ticket sales, which create ideal conditions for all manner of scams and overpricing.  The Olympics arrive only every four years and often play out in small venues, making tickets scarce and valuable. Buyers invest an outrageous amount of money and time just to get to the scene. If they come without tickets, the pressure to get some is immense.  So they usually come hat in hand to scalpers.  Moreover, would-be scammers who sell for local baseball or football games have at least a small chance of seeing their victims in the future. Olympian scams pose almost no risk to the criminal, who will probably be half a world away by the time the ruse is exposed.

Perhaps the largest Olympic ticket scam in history occurred two years ago. During the Beijing games, dozens of Olympic athlete families were scammed by a Web site, estimated to have stolen millions of dollars from would-be fans.

The Vancouver Olympic Committee set out to prevent a similar debacle, using the only trick that such agencies ever consider: making money off scalping. In Vancouver, neither scalping nor exchanging tickets is allowed. Resold tickets can be "deactivated" and made invalid for events, the Olympic committee warns. It says anyone who wants to sell tickets must use the "fan-to-fan" Internet marketplace set up by the Olympic committee. The good news: tickets are relatively easy to find. The bad news: the agency makes 10 percent off both the sale and the purchase of the tickets. Even worse: High demand tickets are being sold eBay auction style. This week, opening bids for tickets to the "preliminary round" Canada-U.S. hockey game were listed as high as $10,000 -- not including the $1,000 "marketplace" fee.

So how is state-sponsored scalping doing at tamping down illicit sales? I went to Vancouver without event tickets to have a look. Knowing about the ticket troubles in Beijing, I fully expected the organized Canadians to have beaten down the business. Far from it.

'Relaxed about things'
Placard-wearing sellers were easily found, yelling like carnival barkers at the crowd, just above the child skating rink and popular free rip-cord line set up for the Games revelers. Within earshot -- heck, close enough for a body check -- were uniformed sheriff's officers (provincial law enforcement) ignoring the activity. Tickets were going for double their face value, more in some cases. The scalpers showed no fear of law enforcement. It was easy to spot the ringleader, going from seller to seller, whispering something in their ears every few minutes.

Vancouver -- a city where people say "I'm sorry" for passing you on the sidewalk -- is trying its darnedest to be friendly for the World.  Volunteers in blue jackets that say "Ask me" are everywhere. So I asked. Is scalping legal?

"No. But you know, we are a bit more relaxed about those things here," said one, who for obvious reasons didn't want to be named. But he then warned me about the counterfeit ticket problem, before asking why Americans don't know where Manitoba is.

Ten minutes later, I spotted two men and a woman wearing electric yellow sheriff's jackets, standing about 20 feet from a man selling tickets. I turned my back to him, quietly showed them my press pass, and inquired: "What is the law in British Columbia?"  I discovered that I'd apparently stumbled on the Canadian equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.

"You'll have to ask the by-law people."

"You can't tell me what the law is?"

"You'll have to ask the by-law people."

"What if I don't ask you as a reporter, just as a person who might buy a ticket. Is it legal to do so?"

"You'll have to ask the by-law people."

Not among my best interviews.

I was about to ask the obvious question ("What's a by-law person?") when one of them spotted a polite way out of the conversation.

"Go ask him, that guy on the bike over there."

The guy on the bike was a Vancouver city cop.  He also didn't want to be quoted. But he was serious.

"It's illegal to sell anything without a permit in the city of Vancouver," he told me.  "You are subject to a $250 fine and seizure of the items you're selling."

The fine hardly seemed a big risk, given the potential financial rewards, but the officer assured me that he was not to be taken lightly.

"I have about 50 or 60 tickets right here," he said, pointing to his backpack.  "Some guys lost a lot of money today."

At this point, I scanned the horizon.  No scalpers were in sight.  Clearly, they were afraid of this cop.

He also warned about counterfeiters.

"The guys from France of Germany are long gone by the time you are at your event and can't get in," he said.

Despite this policeman's welcome clarity, my confusion over the legality of ticket scalping grew even more as the day wore on. While I was hearing about confiscated tickets, the Vancouver organizing committee was busy telling reporters that scalping was indeed legal.

"It's important for those of you who may not be from (British Columbia) to know that scalping is not illegal here," committee spokeswoman Renee Marie-Valade said at a news conference, according to a transcript provided by NBC. "So we are certainly aware that people may be selling tickets. We keep a close eye out for it."

She then went to great pains to steer prospective customers to her agency's Web site.

" The best advice to any consumer who is still looking to buy a ticket … particularly if you are thinking about buying from someone that's offering them on the street is to be very, very wary of that because that ticket may end up leaving you disappointed at the entrance to the venue," she said.

Almost scammed
Just how big a problem are counterfeits?

Joseph Rupolo of Long Island, N.Y., said he stopped his father on Tuesday, just moments before he was about to shell out $200 at Robson Square for fake tickets to a women's hockey game. Rupolo, an intern for the NBC Olympics team, had seen legitimate tickets at the office, with their trademark hologram logo. The tickets his father was about to buy were missing the logo.

"I checked the competition schedule later that day and found that Sweden wasn't even competing against Japan that evening," he said.

He then spent the afternoon pricing tickets on Craigslist and other online sources -- which are plentiful, if risky. A man named Cory offered to sell tickets to the men's hockey semifinal for $1,000.

"I have the hard copy tickets here in Vancouver and will exchange in person at my place or at a bank. I will provide full proof of purchase and validity upon exchange," he wrote in an e-mail.

Goal! Eventually
Robert Broughton of New Westminster, British Columbia, told me he actually managed to successfully buy scalped tickets earlier this week in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, but not without a bit of agony. First, he tried to attend the women's 3,000 meter speed skating race, but prices ranged from $250 to $400 each. He headed back to the train, where a seller hard-pitched him a ticket for $300, even though the event had already started.

But over at Thunderbird Arena, where women's hockey is being played, he managed to buy a spare ticket from an "amateur" seller for face value at $50 -- after milling about for nearly an hour.

His advice: "Don't waste your time talking to professional scalpers, especially ones with thick English accents. Their sole objective is to cheat you."

Yes, many scalpers are pros. In fact, Broughton recognized some of the sellers from 1994, when he attended the Lillehammer, Norway games.

For obvious reasons, there is no good data on the amount of scalping at Olympic Games, and no way to know if Vancouver is doing better or worse than other games. With 1.6 million tickets for sale this time around, there's plenty of opportunity for mischief – and last-minute ticket purchases.  It's quite clear, however, that the Vancouver Olympic Committee's efforts to stamp out fraud and scalping by profiting off of it have not been an unqualified success.

Houston-based attorney Jim Moriarty, who was a ticket scam victim in Houston, now runs a Web site called Olympic Ticket Scam.  He blames continued ticket problems on the International Olympic Committee's convoluted process for purchasing tickets and the fact that it makes tickets so scarce that athlete family members have trouble getting into events.

"There is a Code of Points used in the judging system for gymnastics. Where is the Code of Ethics for ticket distribution?" he asked in a recent post on his Web site. "There are volumes of rules and regulations for each Olympic sport; for judging; and for procedures. ... The specifics for distributing tickets? Not so clear."

Broughton, the Canadian fan who bought tickets from scalpers, also complained that Olympic tickets are kept artificially scarce, with many going to corporate partners, leaving few for local fans and travelers. As evidence for his complaint, he pointed to empty seats at many events.

"After the game started, there were at least 500 empty seats at a supposedly sold-out event," he complained. "I'm still steamed about all the empty seats at the women's ice hockey game on Sunday. I would love to hear a reporter ask the' People In Charge' who holds these tickets, so that we all know that they were inconsiderate enough to leave them in a desk drawer."

Reporters did ask Marie-Valade about the empty seat problem.  She said the committee had a "ticket SWAT team" looking into the problem, and offered this explanation.

"It's a complex environment because we have tickets that are sold to the public. Typically, what we are seeing is those seats that are sold the public are being used. Some of the blocs that you are seeing may in fact be not used through a variety of different programs that we have," she said.  "We have an obligation to provide seats to athletes who may or may not be able to come watch the sports. There are a range of Olympic Family programs that provide seating. We are always looking at those and there's a whole team of people who go to each sport event and look at where the empty seats are and come back and analyze what we can do for the next one to make sure those seats are filled. "

Readers of Ron Paul would say that attempts to regulate ticket sales have predictably failed, and that a thriving black market has developed -- as always happens when any agency seeks to artificially control the distribution of goods and services. There is little argument that capitalism is alive and well in Vancouver.  Right next to the scalpers were tables of women selling the must-have fashion accessory of these games -- poofy red mittens that say "Canada" and include the familiar maple leaf.  They sold for $23 on Robson Square.  At the drugstore five blocks away, they cost $12.99.

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