Venice deploys secret tourist police to spy on rogue visitors' phones

Venice has invested in police numbers and new surveillance technologies. Photo / Getty Images

Don't look now, but the Venetian police have begun spying on the whereabouts and phone calls of tourists.

Venice has said it will be installing a web of cutting edge technology that will be used to track the number of visitors to the tiny floating city.

As well as tracking signals from mobile phones, 34 sensors will be installed at busy intersections which will able to identify silhouettes of passers by, according to reporting in The Sun.

The city says it will be using to keep tabs on the 60000 daily visitors, and potentially identify those dodging the 6-euro-day tourist tax. Although the local council says the new network will be conducted "in absolute respect for privacy."

The city's spooky new powers of observation are now in place for the city's peak Carnival season, which runs for m February 8 to February 25.

Motion sensors will be able to identify the silhouettes of tourists. Photo / Supplied

Tourism councillor Paola Mar told local media that it has become important to be able to track the flow of visitors to certain parts of the city, prone to overcrowding:
"The system will use a mix of sensors, cameras and WiFi to constantly monitor the situation with a data release every 25 hundredths of a second," he said.

"The information is processed in the smart control room by dedicated software, which can then return information on the density of people present at a specific moment and their speed of movement.

Don't look now: Venice's new surveillence powers are in place in time for for Carnival. Photo / Dyland Freedom, Unsplash

"In this way, we can predict at what time pedestrians will arrive at a certain critical point and divert them to another area in advance, so as not to clog or block pedestrian traffic.

"Preventing everyone from following the same path has a double advantage: it allows better management of flows but also the discovery of unknown streets"

While it might be able to help battle pedestrian congestion, the new surveillance measures will be in place ahead of a relaunch of the visitor access fees.

Phone towers will be used to count and locate visitors within the city perimetres. Photo / Supplied

This July a new colour coded system will be in place, which will charge tourists from 'Green' 3 euros to visit at a time of low congestion, up to 'Black', 10 euros for the peak times of peak seasons.

Part of new measures announced with the new high-tech powers of the Venice city is the reinforcement of the city police garrison to 50 units.

The job of whom will be in part to police the new 'access fees'. Fees if tourists either fail to pay the visitor tax on time, or register correctly could be accompanied by fines of up to 450 euros.