Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Beware of the black mirrors


Here's a nice job, if you can get it. Be the guy assigned to spy on the Danish women's football team. By running a camera through a two-way mirror in their hotel room. The pay may or may not be great, but you will never be prosecuted, even when caught and detained by Danish officials until the police arrive. FIFA and the IOC will have your back, too.

Before you lot go and get visions of Revenge of the Nerds, and start screaming "Bush! Bush!" at the monitor, it's not like that. No, this wasn't filming hot lady on lady action in the showers, this was filming a tactical meeting between the coaches.

When said meeting was going on, one of the Danish officials noticed movement behind a black glass mirror. They called the hotel and demanded the adjoining door be unlocked and found two Chinese men with cameras taking notes. The Danes did the sensible thing and held the men until the police arrived.

The police, however, were no help. Instead of frog marching these two down to the station house, they seem to have let them go on their own recognizance. When the Danish federation complained to FIFA, FIFA said, "Hey, there's no problem of ours here". Sepp Blatter, who is used to talking out of his ass, opined on the incident as well. He says there was a clear security failure, but as a member of the IOC himself, he has no reason to believe anything like this will happen next month as well.

Well, sure, maybe not. But if Dara Torres is placed in a room with black mirrors, she had better question if that's where she wants to inject her horse steroids or not.*

*Not really my belief. Innocent until proven guilty, anyway.

[Update: There is a very thorough account of the whole incident in this Sports Illustrated piece. Definitely worth a read.]

1 comment:

BackBergtt said...

theres a typo in the spy v spy picture. hardward? i do like the suggestion that spy v spy is responsible for modern surveilance technology though