One of the great contrasts of the Olympic Games is that while they bring out the best in athletes, they often bring out the worst in host cities. This past week offered a sharp reminder of this dynamic, with fresh revelations that the National Security Agency engaged in indiscriminate surveillance during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. This was no mere quirk of history. The Olympics-induced state of exception has long afforded government authorities enormous leeway to break norms and bend laws.

If, as appears likely, Paris and Los Angeles are awarded the 2024 and 2028 Games respectively, the cities should bear in mind the events in Salt Lake City and not sleepwalk to the optimistic rhythms of the IOC. It’s time to face up to the past and make big asks for the future.

The NSA, according to former executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake, was not merely scooping up metadata during the Salt Lake City Games, alarming as even that would be. Drake said of the warrantless dragnet: “Virtually all electronic communication signals that went into or out of one of those designated areas were captured and stored by the NSA, including the contents of emails and text messages.” Drake’s input is part of a lawsuit brought in 2015 by former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson alleging an overreaching mass surveillance program that vacuumed up data on millions of innocent people.

Drake’s disclosure adds detail to what former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, that according to government documents, the NSA met with higher-ups from “COMPANY E” ahead of the Games. As part of the President’s Surveillance Program, “NSA asked COMPANY E to provide call detail records in support of security for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.” The CEO of “COMPANY E,” which turned out to be Denver-based Qwest, fully cooperated. Another document from the Snowden surveillance archive makes it clear that Salt Lake City was no one-off: “NSA has had an active role in the Olympics since 1984 Los Angeles games, and has seen its involvement increase with the recent games in Atlanta, Sydney, and Salt Lake City.”

The lesson for everyday people in aspiring host cities is threefold. First, governments are perfectly willing to use the Games to test-drive new methods and technologies, publicly denying it all the while. Second, private companies are more than willing to go along for the ride. Finally, the truth can take years to unearth.

Since the 2002 Salt Lake City Games – the last time the US hosted the Olympics – the country has cartwheeled forward with intensified surveillance measures. This should fuel serious public concern in Los Angeles. But the only group raising the issue is NOlympics LA, led by activists from the Democratic Socialists of America and their coalition allies. The LA bidding team simply avoids the subject.

The truth is that the Olympics are at an inflection point. The promise of memorable athletic performances is no longer enough. The terrain around the Games has shifted mightily in the last decade, with activists, academics, and elected officials asking tough questions during the bid process, kneecapping bids with data and in some cases torpedoing them with public referenda. Exhibit A is Boston where activists so vociferously opposed the Games that the mayor refused to sign on the dotted line for cost overruns, thereby killing the bid. The 2024 Olympics field originally featured five full-fledged candidates before public pressure derailed bids in Hamburg, Rome, and Budapest, leaving only Los Angeles and Paris.

For too long the IOC’s response to criticism has been to ladle out fat dollops of slapdashery. It starts at the top with the IOC president, Thomas Bach. The Rio 2016 Olympics left a herd of white-elephant venues already crumbling into disrepair, disgruntled residents who had their homes demolished for the Games, and broken legacy promises, most notably related to water cleanup. Former Rio mayor Eduardo Paes, who was one of the Games’ biggest boosters, has been accused of accepting nearly $5m for shepherding Olympic contracts into particular palms. Yet, in the wake of the Games, Bach proclaimed the Rio Olympics “marvelous” and heralded their “tremendous legacy to the people of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and South America.” He even claimed with a straight face that in Rio, “the financial model of the Olympic Games has really stood a stress test.”

Fast forward to today. In Los Angeles and Paris, the IOC has two relatively strong bids. Bach recently said “this is a position you like to be in.” But behind Bach’s stiff-lipped insistence, the smartest people in the IOC know that with the number of aspiring host cities dwindling the Olympics are in crisis. Even the Economist, the house journal for corporate capitalism, has admitted that the current dearth of prospective hosts indicates that “the business model for the Olympic Games is running out of puff.”

According to media reports, LA is engaged in backroom badinage with the IOC to squeeze out a few concessions, including financial aid to run its organizing committee for an additional four years. Last week, the LA mayor Eric Garcetti suggested that the IOC could also help finance metropolitan youth sports programs. If these are the best concessions that Los Angeles bid jockeys can wrest from the IOC, then they need to work on their game. This is a historic opportunity to extract fat satchels of cash from the IOC (and the group has plenty to spare) that could benefit everyday Angelenos. After all, LA has more people living in poverty than any other major US city and the highest number of chronically homeless people in the country. Last year, LA had the most officer-involved killings in the US. The Los Angeles County Jail is the biggest in the country, and is plagued by serious inmate abuse issues. Los Angeles need not squander this unique moment. Time to think big. The Olympics come with serious baggage, whether it’s blanket surveillance, public debt, or aggressive marginalization of the already marginalized. LA bidders have a rare chance to push back.