The International Olympic Committee recently revealed that mobile hotspots are prohibited in this year’s London Olympics. Participants and viewers are permitted to use smartphone or tablet devices inside the venues yet personal or private access points including 3G hubs are not allowed. In order to enforce this rule the IOC planned to put Wifi police.

The Wifi police personnel are equipped with portable directional antennas for tracing signal transmitters and interference sources. The antenna allows signal transmitters and interference sources to be reliably detected and localized. The direction is found by orienting the antenna towards the maximum signal level.

The picture above was posted by the Twitter user @SadaoTurner along with the caption, “Something you won’t see on TV, this is the Olympics WiFi Police. They seek unauthorized WiFi signals and shut them down.”

The ban on WiFi hotspots has to do with efforts to keep interference and overloaded networks to a minimum. This is because there has been issues in the past with overcrowded networks interfering with event equipment and preventing commentators from receiving necessary data regarding the events.

Source: adafruit.com