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Abuses around football stadiums have been a major problem for some times, these abuses range from riots to insults. These stadium abuses are common in many parts of the world, from the lower leagues to the highest leagues. The consequences of the abuses vary from the fact that single supporters or entire supporter groups are no longer allowed to be present at matches to fatalities, as unfortunately recently in Indonesia (Baraputri & Davids, 2022).

In the Netherlands “smart” cameras are used for a few years in several stadiums, these cameras can analyse behaviour and recognize faces. The images from the cameras are then analysed by using artificial intelligence and machine learning (Ministry of Health, wellbeing and sports, 2022). Artificial Intelligence is the capacity of a computer thinking as a rational human and machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence that can predict new data based on processed data (Grewal, 2020).

With the introduction of this technology the amount of stadium bans has risen sharply in the Netherlands (Sportredactie, 2022). However, there are still a lot of events that the KNVB would rather keep out the stadiums like fireworks. In the United States they use scanners that can detect objects, these scanners will detect more than the search of stewards in stadiums (Cohen, 2022). This could be a potential solution for the KNVB to tackle problems like fireworks and arms around football matches.

However, all these technologies do invade the privacy of the supporters, this does not take into account the fact that the problems are often caused by a few individuals while all the supporters are affected with these technologies.

Looking at the situation in the Netherlands considering the privacy problem, the question that arises is whether we should let go of minor abuses such as fireworks or whether we should tackle any form of abuses. In my opinion, the possible application of the systems as in the United States would not outweigh the privacy breach as long as abuses such as fireworks do not result in injuries. I also think that the data collected by the cameras should be handled very carefully, this data should remain encrypted as much as possible and may only be used by the authorities in case of serious individual suspicion.

The football stadiums are just one example where major technological developments have created a field of tension between technology and privacy. Another example of this tension is emotion ai, in which people’s emotions can be traced during certain actions (grocery shopping for example). In my opinion, the government will therefore have to rigorously assess whether the interests of the technology outweigh the invasion of privacy and regulation must be introduced where necessary!

Baraputri, V. & Davids, M. (2022, 2 oktober). Indonesia: At least 125 dead in football stadium crush. BBC News viewed on 13 october 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63105945

Cohen, A. (2022, September 16). Evolv Security Screening Technology Is Finding Success Among Sports Venues as Frictionless Fan Experience Is Prioritized. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.sporttechie.com/evolv-security-screening-technology-frictionless-fan-experience-sports-venues

Grewal, P. D. S. (2014). A Critical Conceptual Analysis of Definitions of Artificial Intelligence as Applicable to Computer Engineering. IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering, 16(2), 09–13. https://doi.org/10.9790/0661-16210913

Ministry of Health, wellbeing and sports. (2021, May 18). De inzet van slimme technologie in voetbalstadions voor de aanpak van discriminatie en racisme. Rijksoverheid.nl. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2021/05/18/de-inzet-van-slimme-technologie-in-voetbalstadions-voor-de-aanpak-van-discriminatie-en-racisme

Sportredactie. (2022, October 12). KNVB legt 1250 landelijke stadionverboden op: ‘Daders komen er niet mee weg.’ AD.nl. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.ad.nl/nederlands-voetbal/knvb-legt-1250-landelijke-stadionverboden-op-daders-komen-er-niet-mee-weg~af561ffa/

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The Dutch secretary of state for digitization Alexandra van Huffelen has announced that government organizations are allowed to make use of commercial cloud services under strict conditions (Ministry of General Affairs, 2022). Before this announcement government organizations were only allowed to use their own private cloud services.

They only were allowed to use the private cloud service due to the fact that there still were many security and privacy challenges for the public cloud. These concerns are very broad with the main concern that unauthorized people get access to applications and data for which they are not authorized (Ren et al., 2012). Rapid advancements in the infrastructure of ICT have solved a lot of these concerns (Dahunsi et al., 2021).

The service reliability increased, the security improved and response times to vulnerabilities became faster (Ministry of General Affairs, 2022). These improvements and the fact that the benefits (lower cost, flexible, redundancy and scalability) (Yang et al., 2010) outweigh against the drawbacks have made the Dutch government switch to the hybrid use of public clouds and private clouds.

The risk of using a public cloud is still higher than with the use of a private cloud. Therefore every Dutch governmental institution must first make a risk analysis before they are allowed to make use of the public cloud services. There are also some other conditions that must be met before usage. The public cloud may not be used for state secrets, nor may cloud services be purchased from suppliers which are based in countries with an active cyber program against the Netherlands and the ministry of defense is excluded in advance from the use of the public cloud (Ministry of General Affairs, 2022).

We can conclude that the use of private cloud is saver than the use of public cloud. With the growing trend of cyber wars, this could pose additional dangers for the Dutch government (Lal, 2022). The guidelines for the mandatory risk analysis that must be fulfilled before the usage of public clouds is allowed have yet to be determined (Ministry of General Affairs, 2022).

Defining these guidelines needs to be done very carefully in my opinion with the emerging trend of cyber wars. An option for this case is the development of a tool, this tool will make an assessment based on several questions about the data whether it is safe to store the data in the public cloud or in the private cloud. If organizations doesn’t follow up the outcome of the tool or manipulate the tool, should they be banned from using the public cloud from that point on. These assessment must must be checked by a higher-ranking official so that a mistake by a lower-ranking official does not exclude the entire organization. However, I think there are still a lot of snags to make this system completely safe!

References
Dahunsi, F., Idogun, J. & Olawumi, A. (2021, 10 maart). Commercial Cloud Services for a Robust Mobile Application Backend Data Storage. Indonesian Journal of Computing, Engineering and Design (IJoCED), 3(1), 31–45. https://doi.org/10.35806/ijoced.v3i1.139
Lal, A. (2022, 15 juli). Cyberwarfare: What’s At Stake In The Era Of Digitization? Forbes. Geraadpleegd op 21 september 2022, van https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/07/15/cyberwarfare-whats-at-stake-in-the-era-of-digitization/
Ministry of General Affairs. (2022, 29 augustus). Werken ‘in de cloud’ wordt mogelijk voor Rijksoverheid. Nieuwsbericht | Rijksoverheid.nl. Geraadpleegd op 20 september 2022, van https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2022/08/29/werken-in-de-cloud-wordt-mogelijk-voor-rijksoverheid
Ren, K., Wang, C. & Wang, Q. (2012, januari). Security Challenges for the Public Cloud. IEEE Internet Computing, 16(1), 69–73. https://doi.org/10.1109/mic.2012.14
Yang, X., Kandula, S. & Zhang, M. (2010). CloudCmp. Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Internet measurement – IMC ’10. https://doi.org/10.1145/1879141.1879143