The Australian's Catherine Armitage reports from Beijing.
Excerpt:

Hesitation to seek outside help appears to have paralysed security planning for the Games. Peter Phillips, Asia director for Canberra consulting group GRA, was a key adviser to the Beijing bid. Phillips says Beijing's aim is to provide effective security for the Games at lower cost than Athens and "without making it look like they run the joint like an armed camp". He says key decisions on systems, procurement and training need to be made urgently, but "nothing appears to be happening" because the Chinese are so worried about appearing not to be able to manage security themselves.

As a result, Olympic venues are going up without security features. They will have to be built in later, which will be "very expensive and probably sub-optimal", according to Phillips.

On the twin issues of security and the media, "all sorts of mad domestic sensitivities and paranoias are in play" Phillips observes. Like many others, he believes "it is absolutely inevitable that there are going to be incidents" involving the authorities and the media.