CCTV Social: Day I Session II. 2pm
Duration: 00:16:57; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 217.853; Saturation: 0.089; Lightness: 0.071; Volume: 0.053; Cuts per Minute: 3.773; Words per Minute: 74.575
Summary: For CCTV Social, artist Shaina Anand collaborated with Manchester Metropolitan University and Arndale Shopping Centre to open working CCTV environments to a general audience. People normally 'enclosed' by these networks came into the control rooms to view, observe and monitor this condition, endemic in the UK.
About thirty people signed up for one-hour sessions in the MMU security center to engage with the CCTV operators and monitor surveillance procedures. These sessions became somewhat like a diagnostic clinic, where we discussed symptoms, anxieties and inoculations about our 'public health', under surveillance. These therapy sessions seemed to work both ways, for the participants as well as the security officers.
This is footage of Sarah and Gwen's interaction with Joe a surveillance officer at Manchester metropolitan University. The footage offers some interesting insights about profiling, paranoia and the assumed neutrality of electronic surveillance. We see Joe relentlessly 'following' a certain man throughout the footage. His reason for doing it was that the man in question was not 'nice'. We also find out that Sarah had also been a victim of street crime , her account of the incident and the way the authorities dealt with it brings up issues of the actual 'effectiveness' of CCTV, the myth of security and police response time to crime. This is footage also includes footage of Mathew and Rachel's conversation with Joe and Steve. They talk about the legalities involved in the use of 'dummy' CCTV cameras. They also discuss the emergence of a new trend in electronic surveillance: Talking CCTV. Joe defends the 'interestingness' of CCTV footage when Mathew suggests that he would probably 'doze off' with boredom if he had a similar job.
great photos
The top left portion of a quad screen, in the surveillance control room of Manchester Metropolitan University, displays a man standing and smoking against a red brick wall. The guy walks away. A screen numbered 20 shows a crossing a street. Camera pans right. Two girls talking. Joe trains a CCTV camera on a man,who is dressed in black and is carrying a red bag. The CCTV camera zooms in. The camera pans right. Joe tells the girls how the guy they are "following" and watching is not a "Nice Man." And he takes a picture of the old man as a proof against him if he tries to deny that he was in that particular area at that time. The CCTV camera following the man's movements zooms out.
Related Links:
Privacy
Circuits of Surveillance
Privacy Law
World's Top Surveillance Societies
discriminatory
invasion
mistrust
monitoring
paranoia
prejudice
privacy
profiling
suspicion
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Shaina: That's a CCTV image?
Joe: Yes.
Shaina: Wow! Looks like a family photograph. (Laughs)
Joe: As you see, we've got quite a lot.
Shaina: Oh there's him!
Joe: Oh yeah. This is the same one as we took before... That is quite a lot.
Joe: Some good images, but that's like the system we operate, basically.
Shaina: Yeah.
Joe: Doesn't take long to focus it back on...
Joe: Bye Steve.
Rachel: Do you have quite as much CCTV in where you're from?
Shaina: No, no.
Rachel: This is quite a phenomenon at the moment. The amount that there is here...
Shaina: Yeah, it's one for every eight people.
Joe: In fifteen years there would probably be one on every corner.
Mathew: Where I live in Salford, I think some of the cameras use dummy cameras or don't work.
Steve: No, that's against the law. Unless they indicate it, they can't do that. The legislation says that if there is CCTV, then they have to indicate that there is CCTV. If they've got pretend cameras, and an incident does happen and someone says "I want the footage of that," they can't turn around and say "well sorry, it's a dummy camera." Inside there's got to be CCTV.
Mathew: Well, it's happened a few times. They've got a camera up but they'll say it's not switched on.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
The CCTV cameras being controlled by Joe continue to follow the old man. The CCTV camera zooms out. The camera pans right to the girls who are looking intently at Joe as he talks. Joe trains the CCTV camera on the old man again as he shuffles slowly past a bus stop. The old man stops abruptly on the street. The girls ask Joe if he has been asked by the Police to keep a "special" watch on that man. In response, he says that he is keeping a watch on that man because he is "not nice".
Related Links:
Who Watches the Watchers
discriminatory
invasion
monitoring
paranoia
prejudice
privacy
profiling
watchers
Rachel: I think they kind of sink... Yeah.
Mathew: I don't really do anything that warrants me being followed about.
Rachel: They kind of sink into the background. I don't think that you are aware they they are watching you, but...
Steve: If you don't know they're there, then you are set, people. If you've got nothing to hide, you got nothing to worry about.
Rachel: Yeah. I think when I went to London you see them; there's loads, you see loads of them.
Steve: A lot of them will be static ones that don't move.
Rachel: That's why there's more, so that you cover the area.
Mathew: Well, like up in Leeds, they have like Jimmy Savile going "No Littering! No Littering! Stop doing that!" They've got like him recorded.
Chris: Oh, they've got the talking ones.
Mathew: Yeah, the talking ones in Leeds.
Shaina: In Leeds, really?
Mathew: That's a bit ridiculous though, that's what I think.
Steve: What? The talking ones?
Mathew: Yeah. Some people will start vandalising and stuff. You know, when they become like animated objects, right, when they are so passive. You see them, they're passive. But if they start getting animated and stuff...
Steve: A lot of them will be on lampposts. I don't think they...
Mathew: Yeah, but I think people will start vandalising them, and kids will anyway.
Camera pans right and Sarah talks about being mugged. Despite the fact that CCTV cameras were around and that the incident was, in fact, captured by them, no one prevented it from happening.
Related Links:
Does CCTV deter crime?
Can CCTV reduce crime
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
prediction. ineffectiveness
prevention
response time
security
street crime
Chris: I find it kind of like hypnotic. (Laughs)
Steve: Yes.
Chris: Do you know what I mean? Like just staring at the screens.
Steve: Well, it doesn't when we've done twenty-two hour double shifts.
(Laughter)
Mathew: Do you like watch much telly?
Steve: No I don't watch much TV, don't get time to.
Mathew: Well I got those BT vision boxes. At first you get all these channels... digital channels.
Joe: Yeah.
Mathew: Then they switch them off after a bit, so I was left without BBC One, I was only left with, like, BBC Four. But I fell asleep leaning off the couch trying to watch something. 'Naked', you know, the Mike Leigh film.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Sarah talks about being mugged. Despite the fact CCTV cameras were around and that the incident was in fact captured by them, no one prevented it from happening. Joe asserts that if he saw something like that, he'd call the police. Then he talks about an incident when someone was shot within range of their CCTV camera coverage, but they failed to film it because the cameras were not trained on that spot when the incident occurred. The ineffectiveness of CCTV cameras as a preventative measure against crime becomes evident in this exchange.
effectiveness
policing
prevention
safety
security
street crime
Joe: No. As I said, I don't watch a lot of TV.
Mathew: Well, I fell asleep on the couch. If I was on a job like this, I'll end up dozing off.
Joe: You would? No. No, you won't. Cause there's just so much going on from half past nine to like six in the morning. There's always people around, always.
Mathew: Yeah, that's what I mean. So you find that engaging? Do you find that engaging watching it?
Joe: Its me job, innit? At the end of the day, well paid job as well. But it's a job and it's a good job, a lot of job satisfaction out of it.
Mathew: I've dispensed with it now, the BT vision box. It's just like a bit of sculpture in my home.
Joe goes for a break while Steve takes over. The officers at the control room alternate between patrol duty and surveillance duty. Before leaving, Joe insists again that surveillance duty at night is "completely different."
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
conversation
night
patrol
shift
surveillance
Joe: But that's TV, innit? That's fictional, this is live what we're watching. Live robberies, live attacks and things like that. As you see it's happening, it's not like made up on TV. This is actually what's going on in the streets.
Mathew: I know, it's highly ______ job, innit?
Steve: I've seen people... One person get kicked senseless and I had to follow it for five minutes. I can assure you it's not pleasurable. But I've still gotta film it, watch it, report to the police. We have to.
Rachel: Does it effect you, like psychologically? Do you have to get counselling? Cause I couldn't do it, I couldn't watch it.
Steve: No.
Joe shows us some photographs of people taken for ID purposes. They include images of people standing in a group and talking, waiting for a bus, or just walking on the pavement. In the course of showing us the pictures, Joe points to the picture of a man he had been 'watching' earlier. Camera 17 focuses on a group of women walking on the pavement, dressed in
hijabs. The camera pans right. Screen shifts from 17 to 19. We see a double decker bus pass by, while a group of people stand at the bus stop. The camera zooms out and pans left to focus on 'The Footage'.
It's interesting to note that while scanning the streets for 'suspicious' activity or people, the camera pauses more than once on young women evidently belonging to an ethnic minority.
Related Links:
Surveillance and identity: Towards a new anthropology of the person
Neutralizing and Resisting Surveillance
RFID watches over school kids in Japan
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
cameras
data
images
invasion
photographs
privacy
privacy
protection
surveillance
technology
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
On screen 14 Steve watches the traffic pass by on the street. The camera focuses on a man dressed in black, leaning against the protective railings around a park. The camera zooms out and pans left to focus briefly on two people walking on the pavement.
Related Links:
Dummy Cameras:Legal?
cameras
control
dummy
dystopia
future
monitoring
panopticon
social
surveillance
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Related Links:
Big Brother shouting
Warning over CCTV plans in UK
[www.urbaneye.net/results/ue_wp6.pdf CCTV in London]
CCTV
authority
cameras
control
correcting
dissent
monitoring
panopticon
people
power
reaction
talking
watchers
Joe: Girls, I'm taking my break because Steve's coming up now. (Laughter)
Joe: I don't talk that much when I DJ! Hope you enjoyed it.
Girls: Yeah.
Joe: As I said, if you come at night, it's completely different. Completely different.
Sarah: You think if people were more aware of the fact that they were being watched, they would behave better like and not commit crime
http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/97/05/.
Joe: Well, it would deter them at the end of the day. They are a deterrent so... It's good. But he will end up around over the bus stops, or the Student's Union. Let's just see where he goes.
Gwen: What does he do, just sit around?
Joe: He just harasses students and things and... He just found a can, there; beer.
Gwen: Eeeww!
Joe: That's where he hides his beer so...
Gwen: Oh! So it's his beer.
Joe: Yeah, he'll be back for that in a bit.
Sarah: Cause it took a... It was a long... Well, it was like a group mugging.(Laughs) like a group of people just attacked us for no reason, pretty much. And then went on for a while... And like, yeah, really could've done with someone there then.
Joe: Say, if we see something, we'll phone the police.
Officer: Yeah, we'll definitely call the police.
Joe: But they have been filmed, innit?
Officer: It was on the roundabout, wasn't it? It was just off camera.
Joe: And another one here.Two guys fighting each other. Another one got shot here. He died, didn't he? Someone was shot there, just there around the corner; someone gone out and shot him dead. Shot enough bullets. The camera at the time was usually always pointing down there. And when he was actually shot, it was over there for some reason. (Pans right) So we didn't get any footage.
Joe: You see, that's how clear it is. But at a distance, you can't really see peoples faces until I zoom in on it. Tonight's usually busy - Fridays - quite a lot happens.
Sarah: Oh, look at that guy. Some shopping!
Shaina: There he is.
Joe: I'll just put him on a different camera.
Sarah: Is it the police who told you to keep an eye on him?
Joe: Yeah. He's been around for years, to be fair to him. He's not the nicest of guys.
Sarah: When I got mugged in... Near Piccadilly, they had... They said they had zoomed in and they had perfect, like, footage. But nobody came and helped or anything. I was like, well at least you've got a video of it. (Laughs)
Joe: Yeah, but it's got to be reported. We can't just come up to you and say I've just filmed you being mugged. You've got to report it and then the police put a request in for it.
Sarah: Could you have not phoned the police and then they would have...?
Joe: Yeah, we have done that in the past. We see a mugging and we'll phone the police straight away.
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.