How surveillance technology is reshaping public event safety

In today’s rapidly evolving security landscape, ensuring safety at public events has never been more complex. From concerts and festivals to political protests and sports matches, these gatherings are not only vibrant moments of community life - they also carry significant risks. Incidents, such as the Manchester Arena bombing, coordinated cyber intrusions, and the spread of misinformation during events, such as the Southport riots, highlight the diverse and growing threats local authorities, security professionals and event organisers must anticipate. 

 Event organisers and security professionals face the challenge of protecting attendees and local communities from physical threats while navigating the ethical, financial, and societal implications of new surveillance and safety technologies. How do we weigh the benefits of new technologies against these costs? And how do we do it consistently, transparently, and in the public interest?  

This blog explores how technology is reshaping risk management in public spaces and what it means for balancing safety and security with privacy, financial costs and societal impacts. It introduces a structured method for assessing the real-world implications of surveillance tools and interventions across these priorities and concludes with key insights on the challenges and opportunities ahead for risk and safety strategies in public space management. 

With Great Capability Comes Greater Responsibility 

The use of new technologies, including AI-powered surveillance, CCTV cameras, drone monitoring, and biometric scanning is changing the risk equation. It has enabled real-time risk assessment, automated alerts and rapid response strategies that were previously unthinkable. For example, facial recognition systems can detect known threats entering a venue, while CCTV cameras have been found to decrease crime incidents especially when combined with other interventions. Such technologies can offer advantages in mitigating safety and security risks, facilitating faster and informed decisions.   

However, the very tools designed to provide safety also introduce new risks, especially to individual rights and public trust. When deployed without context or oversight, these tools can infringe on individual privacy and freedom of movement, disproportionately affect specific social groups based on colour, gender, sex, race, nationality, religion, disabilities, and undermine public trust. For example, in 2017, the Met was urged to cancel its planned use of facial recognition software at Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's largest street festival, due to biases in the system and false positives. While this emphasises the need to assess how effective a technology is, it also introduces a series of questions as to effective at what cost, and for whom.  

Privacy Protection & Safety Needs: A Delicate Balancing Act 

Security professionals stress concerns about data breaches, function creep. For security professionals managing high-profile events, such as the Olympics or major festivals, the pressure to deliver robust safety measures is immense. But behind every technology and data feed lies a complex ethical equation. Beyond preventing threats, security professionals need to weigh the legal and social costs of surveillance, including data breaches, function creep, and the potential of normalising temporary security measures becoming permanent. This raises key ethical questions: How long should data be kept? Who has access? What happens after the event ends? While frameworks, such as the GDPR offer essential rights - access, erasure, rectification,- there is an increasing demand for proactive practices, including data minimisation, strict retention timelines, and transparency protocols.  

Ultimately, managing risk in public spaces does not need just compliance with GDPR or legal frameworks, but also a cultural shift toward normalising privacy rights as an integral part of safety. Embedding this mindset into planning, operations, and legacy decisions can help safety and security strategies remain proportionate, transparent, and publicly accountable—during the event and well beyond. 

Financial Costs & Societal Impacts 

Advanced surveillance systems and data analytics tools often involve high upfront costs, frequently placing them out of reach for smaller event organisers or local authorities. Beyond installation, these systems require ongoing investment in trained personnel, secure data infrastructure, and technical support. Effective risk management must also account for contingency planning in case of system failures, data breaches, or legal non-compliance. These considerations highlight the need for strategic decision-making that accounts not only for the effectiveness and lawfulness of the security tool per se but also its resources, how feasible and proportionate are to the scale and context of the event. 

Surveillance systems at public events can also change how we experience those spaces. Attendees’ freedom of expression and peaceful assembly may be influenced by perceptions of being monitored. This perceived loss of anonymity and autonomy can create a discrepancy between how the public feels and how experts justify security decisions, potentially driving mistrust, especially if surveillance measures are perceived as excessive or poorly explained. These impacts may also extend after an event where surveillance data is reviewed and analysed, especially where it is used in police action or court proceedings. These social implications raise important questions for the degree of accessibility and inclusivity of public event – an aspect to be weighed carefully against the intended security benefits of surveillance. 

Certain social groups can be more affected than others. For example, Amnesty International has demonstrated how facial recognition technologies showed significant disparities in accuracy across racial groups, leading to wrongful real life consequences after the event. Recital 75 of GDPR and Recitals 50 and 51of the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) recognise that surveillance can lead to physical, material, or non-material harm, particularly where data about "vulnerable natural persons" is processed. Vulnerability also manifests through differential exposure; for example, younger people socialising in public or communities already experiencing social unrest often face heightened surveillance and subsequent policing. That is, vulnerability is related to both a person’s ability to give informed consent (decisional vulnerability) and their likelihood of suffering harm (outcome vulnerability). Recognising this isn’t just a legal issue; it’s about creating safer, fairer public spaces for everyone. 

Managing Complex Trade-Offs: The Security-Privacy-Cost Evaluation Matrix 

The Security–Privacy–Cost Evaluation Matrix, we developed under the GATHERINGS EU project, is an accessible decision-support tool designed to help surveillance professionals, local administrations and event organisers to weigh safety and security against such privacy, economic costs and social impact. More than just a checklist, this matrix brings structure to complex decisions, balancing public safety with privacy, economic feasibility, and social equity. It identifies key security aspects and contextual factors, helps assessing potential risks across its three pillars, and provides a trade-off measure to determine good safety and security solutions, risk migration strategies for a safer event and post-event evaluations. 

Tested across diverse European contexts from spontaneous protests to large-scale urban festivals, it was developed based on real-world input from national authorities in Belgium, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, and Portugal. Its strength lies in adaptability: whether you're dealing with differing legal systems, cultural expectations, or infrastructure limitations, the matrix guides you through key questions like: Is this measure truly necessary? Could we achieve safety with less intrusion? By supporting transparent documentation and compatibility with existing practices, The Security–Privacy–Cost Evaluation Matrix helps move the conversation from what is the most advanced technology we can use for the safety and security of public events to what is the right level of intervention for this event, these people, and this place. 

Building Trust While Managing Risk in Public Spaces: Challenges & Opportunities 

Balancing public safety, privacy, financial cost and societal impact in public gatherings isn’t just a technical issue; it’s a trust issue. In our experience supporting local authorities and security professionals, we have witnessed the difficulty in navigating rising security expectations and public concern over surveillance practices. Such a structured thinking transforms security planning. It helps you: 

• Avoid over-reliance on high-intrusion tools unless absolutely necessary. 
• Engage stakeholders early - including legal experts, data protection officers, and community voices, to build legitimacy from the outset. 
• Design layered, adaptive plans that combine technological and human judgment, crowd awareness, and on-the-ground responsiveness. 
• Communicate decisions transparently to the public and press. 

The key takeaway? Technology is powerful, but only when contextualised within a broader, human-centred safety strategy - one that values trust, transparency, and the lived experiences of those attending and organising public events. 

We help public authorities, and security professionals to design strategies that are safety-first and people-centred. Whether you’re reviewing surveillance tools or developing a crowd safety plan, we’re here to support every step of your planning process. Get in touch with our team to learn more.