China to spot hooligans at the gate in 2008
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-22 20:19

Beijing plans to stop wouldbe troublemakers at the door during the 2008 Olympics with a high-tech facial recognition system, domestic media said on Wednesday.

The system, to be installed at the gates to Olympic venues, would monitor spectators entering stadiums and flag those previously identified as hooligans before they got inside, the Beijing News reported.

"This technology will make it very easy to ward off 'football hooligan types'," Liu Xuechao, an official from the Beijing police, was quoted as saying.

The new system scanned faces in crowds and quickly compared them to a database of faces using distances between eyes, bone structure and other factors to make identifications and see through changes in head and facial hair, the report said.

Chinese football fans are known to get rowdy at matches, often in response to spotty officiating or poor play in the country's scandal-plagued leagues, but hooliganism and fighting are not a major problem.

The only serious recent incident came when Japan beat hosts China in the finals of the 2004 Asian Cup, after which angry Chinese fans hurled bottles, burned Japanese flags and fought pitched battles with police.

The system may be aimed at weeding out foreign hooligans, but that will require significant cooperation between Beijing police and law enforcers in Europe.

People tagged as troublemakers could be barred from entering Chinese stadiums for up to a year and those found after slipping through venue gates could be removed by force, the report said, citing new city security rules that take effect on March 1.

China is training an elite force of counter-terrorism and riot control police, including a squad of crack sharpshooters, to make sure the 2008 Games are secure.