Beijing's first government data pool and emergency command
center has commenced operations.
The center will operate during and after the Olympics.
The Digital Beijing Building, located a few hundred meters
northwest of the National Stadium, the main stadium for the Games,
will be the central powerhouse of all statistical, visual and audio
information from all 37 venues nationwide during the Olympics.
The center will be able to receive live images from spectator
stands at all venues, sources told China Daily.
The center, 11 storeys high and two levels below ground, will
continue to be the government's command headquarters in the event
of an emergency after the Games.
"Here we have access to the cell phone network, the land phone
network, the government's network and the police network, either
cable or wireless networks. That's why we are able to respond as
the command headquarters in times of an emergency," an official
from the municipality's IT office, who requested anonymity,
said.
"Because we have been working with five telecom and Internet
service providers, we are basically a telecom headquarters."
Experts said that with such a network, the city would be able to
track phone and Internet communications in the event of a terrorist
attack.
"Unlike the US where reportedly 100 percent of phone
communications and 80 percent of Web communications are monitored,
our country has not obtained advanced technologies like that," said
Liu Jianwei, an electronics information expert from Beijing-based
Beihang University.
"At the moment, problems like web communication filtering have
not been solved. But I believe both citizens and the technical
personnel should conduct themselves under the framework of the
law."
(China Daily November 5, 2007)