Is Hosting the Olympic Games Justification for Introducing Permanent Draconian Surveillance?

It seems the last few Olympic Games both the Summer in Utah and the Winter in Vancouver had excellent police protection and security, but wasn't it overdone? The reason I ask is that while I didn't attend either that time around, I did have friends that went. They told me the security was very tight almost like an airport, the entire city. Well, that's unfortunate for all the small businesses hoping to have some extra customers come to town. Okay so, let's talk shall we?

You see, when an Olympic hosting committee sells the concept to the locals, they tell them how great it will be for tourism, facility upgrades, and sales tax revenues - lots of promises are made, most go unfulfilled even with a perfectly run games. Now then, most of the areas after the games, the Olympic Villages, buildings, new stadiums, are relatively run down afterwards, and never fully occupied. The Olympics maybe a great event for humanity, I am pro-Olympics, but if it leaves the town or city in ruin, why bother.

Have you seen Athens lately, all those areas where the stadiums were built are completely run-down, shut down, and weeds now growing through the cracks in the sidewalks. Sure, Athens is used to ancient sporting event facility ruins and buildings but why in our modern era? That's nothing to write home about and it certainly isn't helping tourism now.

Further, if people are hustled around like cattle, made to stand in security lines, treated like crap as they do at the airports with our TSA, then why bother, who does this help, how is this a noble event in that case? It's not, it's a travesty actually, and mind you like I said; I love the Olympics, the concept, and watching the best of the best of humanity compete, it's awesome, but.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek had an interesting article not long ago titled; "Britain unveils electronic mass surveillance plan," by Raphael Satter published on June 15, 2012 which stated; "British authorities unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. -- and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation's top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists."

If the Olympics does nothing more than get people to submit to this level of security and lack of freedom, to get used to it, to try out new surveillance tools on populations, then it is doing equally a disservice for all the good that it does. So, without anyone trying to reason their way out of this reality, or say it doesn't matter, it's time we talked turkey here, and asked this questions straight up and make sure we get satisfactory answers. Please consider all this, and don't shoot the messenger.