CCTV Social: Re-generation. The Mall 1
Cinematographer: Shaina Anand
Duration: 00:14:02; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 29.026; Saturation: 0.299; Lightness: 0.274; Volume: 0.156; Cuts per Minute: 9.187; Words per Minute: 179.390
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, so endemic to the UK.
If the analog control room of MMU's Open Street Surveillance seemed "just like 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'", the CCTV control room of the Arndale Centre bore cold testimony to the much heard myth, 'the IRA bomb saved Manchester.' The mall was the site of the largest IRA bomb in the UK, (1996) and its rebuilding was the start of Manchester's regeneration program.
It's our first morning in the Arndale control room. Colin, who was a janitor at the time of the bombings and now a security officer, defends his stand on privacy, iterating the "I've got nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear" justification. Paul, newest on the job, takes us back into the data bank where blades and terabytes of drives store the data from 206 cameras. The last cupboard he opens reveals "'the one we hate the most": a top angle view of the control room. The watchers are not just watched. Eight microphones record the sounds of the control room.
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Shaina: So what was it that you were just doing? Were you reviewing some footage from last night?
Paul: Yeah, we've been asked by the police to just check some footage from over the weekend, and it's to do with an incident down by the next unit. Now I'm checking among the cameras, just waiting for the search on another camera to finish now. When that's finished, just review the footage on it to see what we can find.
Shaina: What do you mean by finished?
Paul: We've got an all find system; everything's stored on hard drives so it's all digital footage. And you start off in the search and it'll go through and will find whatever recordings there are for that actual camera.
Shaina: Hmmn.
Paul: And then we can pick this one particular time, select that time and then play that back.
Shaina: And this is all digital?
Paul: When it works.
Shaina: When it works?
Paul: Yeah, it's all digital, yeah.
Shaina: Yeah? What do you mean when it works?
Paul: It's like everything else with computers; it can be temperamental.
Shaina: (laughs)
Paul: It's a pain in the backside, really.
We find Paul searching the system hard drives for the footage of a particular incident that occurred over the weekend.
crime
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Arndale Centre, Manchester
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Shaina: And how many cameras is this? Is within this control?
Paul: It actually changes quite often. Colin, what's it now? Two hundred and six?
Colin: Two hundred and six all together, with more being put in.
Paul: I'm the newest one. Newest in the team really, down here. Gayle, how long have you been working here now?
Gayle: Seven years in June.
Paul: And Colin?
Colin: Nineteen years.
Gayle: Nineteen years in the security centre, cleaning as well.
Shaina: Really? At Arndale?
Colin: Yeah.
Shaina: So you were here when the IRA bombing happened?
Colin: Yeah. During and after. I wasn't here when it went off, I was at home in bed cause I worked nights.
Shaina: Okay, yeah.
Colin: But I came in for the clean up. It was pretty amazing. The only way to describe it was it was like a bomb had gone off, as silly as it sounds.
Shaina: What sort of security system was in place then?
Colin : Pretty much similar to what it is now, but it was a lot less cameras at that time.
Gayle: It (the control room) wasn't based here, was it?
Colin: They had no external cameras like we've got now. And they had no cameras on the side of the street where the bomb went off. They had nothing like that. This... What... This system we've got now covers everywhere. Can't go anywhere in the building now without a camera being there watching.
Shaina: Really?
Colin: Yeah.
Shaina: All of it is mapped out.
Colin: Yeah.
We discover that Gayle and Colin have been part of the Arndale security set-up for a long time. We get Colin's grim humoured description of what was left of the Arndale Shopping Centre after IRA bombings.
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Arndale Centre, Manchester
Colin argues in favor of more CCTV. The reasons he gives to justify his position are symptomatic of the popular obsession with 'risk prediction.' It is a result of the fear and paranoia-based politics that exploits people's fear of the 'other' or the 'unknown.'
Marissa: This might be sightly controversial, but do you think it is totally necessary to have so many cameras and so much surveillance especially in circumstances like this?
Colin: Yeah. To be honest, I think it is.
Marissa: And why is that?
Colin: Because you can't trust everybody just to come and shop here. Not everybody's coming here just to buy a pair of jeans, or a top, or a blouse. There is the element that come in specifically to rob, to shop lift, and it's an ongoing problem. It's a big... It's a major problem. It's been going on for years. You'll never stop it, you'll never cure them. It will happen, it will go on forever. I'd be happy if there were more cameras.
Marissa: Would you? Do you...? Are you all for more cameras everywhere and...?
Colin: Yeah, I've got nothing to hide. I mean, there's no problem really, is there?
Marissa: What do you think about it when people say in areas that aren't under surveillance, that it pushes crime into those areas? Would you agree with that?
Colin: No, it doesn't push crime. You do get the element that... It's like, if you put a burglar alarm in the house, or a CCTV camera outside the house, the burglar will look at it and say say, "He's got something to hide. He's protecting something, what is it?" That causes curiosity and they might go in to find out what it is. Same with the City Centre though - if you put too many cameras around, people are going to think, "I wonder if I can do it? If I can do it without being seen?"
Marissa: It's like a challenge for them.
Colin: It's a challenge for some, for others it is a deterrent.
Marissa: Yeah.
compromise
crime
displacement
fear
guilt
liberty
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paranoia
pervasive
prediction
risk
security
short-term
solution
surveillance
suspicion
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Colin: I mean it's the same as the ID cards that they're proposing. To me, it sounds like the people that are against it are those that have got something to hide. If you've got nothing to hide and if you're not going to go out and commit a major crime, what's the problem? It's just silly little people who want to sit there and argue and toss. Personally I don't care, it's all right. I'm above it.
Marissa: Yeah.
Colin: I'd gladly go out and have an ID card.
Marissa: Yeah?
Colin: I've got one anyway - the driver's license.
Shaina: Yeah, but the ID card will have this, like, RFID chip in it.
Colin: It's alright, I've got nothing to hide. Put my DNA in it, I don't really
care. It doesn't bother me. I've got nothing to hide, I'm not going to go out and commit crime; not that I'm aware of.
The 'If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear' argument that Colin offers is highly simplistic. It's a sanctimonious, snappy sounding response that the masses have picked up from 'official' justifications for everything, from increased investment in CCTV, to biometric profiling, to RFID ID cards. It is a tried and tested way of guilt-tripping people into compromising on essential civil liberties in exchange for imagined, illusive security. The argument operates on the assumption that security and freedom are mutually exclusive.
biometrics
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databases
guilt
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information
liberties
liberty
monitoring
power
profiling
security
watching
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Marissa: Do you think that we don't, that we have the right to have some things that are just for us, and not for everybody's seeing?
Colin: Everybody's entitled to privacy at some point. Everybody's entitled to that little bit of privacy.
Shaina: Yeah, which means I have a lot to hide...
(Marissa laughs)
Shaina: And it's private and I want to hide it. Right? I mean...
Colin: Then don't buy your condoms in a public spot.
(laughter)
Shaina: Where then, if there are cameras every where?
Colin: In the pub.
Gayle: We don't have cameras in toilets, so you're all right in there.
Shaina : Ah, okay
Marissa: Is it illegal to have cameras in toilets?
Gayle: It is actually.
Colin: It's illegal if it's facing the cubicle.
Paul: Yeah.
Colin: Or if it's facing the urinal.
Gayle: We did have one actually in the toilet corridor at one time.
Colin: You can actually have it in the toilets so long as it cannot see anybody
using the toilets. It's the business that we're in that's crap. (laughter all round) That's how we see it.
The conversation brings up the issue of expectation of privacy in a public space. Public spaces have increasingly been proliferated with video surveillance. It operates under the assumption that "someone" might do something illegal. Since it is almost impossible to predict who that "someone" will be, everyone is treated as a potential criminal.
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Arndale Centre, Manchester
Marissa: So to work in a control room like this, do you have to have a lot of experience behind you?
Colin: You don't need experience. You can learn on the job.
Marissa: All right.
Colin: But you do need the licenses to work in this control room. Everybody with the security industry is issued one of them. (shows the ID card around his neck)
Shaina: I wanted to get that. It was a four day course, right?
Colin: Yeah, well this one is the door supervisor's badge. Then there is the security badge and the CCTV badge. You've got to have them to work in here.
Chris: You know, you could go into another control room and pretty much get ahead pretty quick.
Colin: The basic principle... (Camera zooms in on a TV screen where a BBC report on army recruitments is being shown. Camera pans down to show feed from Area 7, Roof Level Market Street) The control panels might be different but it's basically the same principle of moving the camera, zooming in. (Camera zooms out)
CCTV
certification
experience
license
operators
qualifications
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watchers
Shaina: Data bank! Don't you want to see it?
(Camera zooms in on a paint ball promotional kiosk in Area 1 Halle Square.)
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Related Links:
Surveillance and Civil Liberties
bank
data
database
games
paintball
violence
war
Shaina: What's paint ball?
Paul: Paint ball. War games. Well, it's running around shooting people.
Marissa: With paint.
Chris: With paint.
(laughter)
Chris: It's still pretty painful, isn't it?
Paul: (laughs and opens the door to the back room where the data bank is)
Paul: The fire evacuations are all in the back, just around the side there. And then you've got all this here, it's all for the CCTV. (Paul opens one of the lockers)
Shaina: You still have screens here?
Paul: Yeah.
Shaina: Why?
Paul: What we've got here is you've got the CPUs and then the server blades. There's one missing at the moment and that's the one from the back desk, it's away with the contractors for the CCTV to get repaired.
Paul: So you got the front right desk which is where I was sitting, the left desk which is where Gayle was sitting, and we used to have a review suite in the far back room which is now... It's a... What you call the NBIS system, and it's a national database for all shoplifters, criminals and that kind of stuff. We can actually go on to the national database through the net and check up on different people - they've got their name, date of birth and things like that. So we can pull up all that information.
Chris: Massive...
Paul: Oh, yeah. It's only recently started, so it's not getting used as much as it should be getting used really. We could be getting a lot more off it than what we are doing. But it's not fully up and running, you know what I mean.
Chris: Is it kind of specific to shop lifting? Is it more for that, or is it like a criminal (database)?
Paul: No, it's actually linked to the police's national database as well so we can get the information off it direct from them. So any ASBOS that people have got, prior convictions, people's rap sheets, all that - we can get that information. Last time they were convicted, how much time they've spent behind bars, and things like that, you know, locked up. So we can get all that information on people.
Shaina: Instantly?
Paul: Yeah. But we don't use it as much as we should do really. Cause half the time we haven't got the time, and a lot of the people that we deal with, they're working on aliases. They're not giving us their proper names and that's what we know them as.
Paul: This girl comes in, she's not... She's not a problem causer, but we call her Melony Dingle. She's... The only issue she causes is that she wets herself. We don't know her proper name but every time we see her we just ask her to leave, and she just walks out, no problem. But cause we don't know her name, it's Melony Dingle.
Shaina: In the review suite is the access to the national database?
Paul: Yeah, where the review suite was. It's not there anymore. We've actually done away with it.
Shaina: Why?
Paul: Well there's equipment there which... It's like what you use in, like, a studio for fade in and fade out and all that kind of stuff. We haven't been trained on it and we don't know how to use it, so why have it? Why use it?
Paul: So it's all just switched off, disconnected. So, but we've got... We just started using PDA's which is a sensor monitor. Everyone walks around with a sensor monitor. Whenever they're doing their job, they swipe it on the bar code with the actual reader. So that's all stored in the back room there as well. As is all the stuff for the NBIS system, that's all over there.
Paul: Everything there, that's all the hard drives.
Shaina: Can you open that?
Paul: So these are all the different hard drives. Each one of these is exactly the same. I can't remember exactly how big the hard drives are.
Shaina: You don't know how many tera-bytes?
Paul: No.
Shaina: But, so this stuff gets erased...
Paul: It has, it's not long been upgraded.
Shaina: It gets erased once a month.
Paul: Yeah. The standard is a set-up for thirty days, and then it's starts overwriting itself.
Shaina: Okay.
Paul: We do get some that have got longer than that on, but they're actually changing the quality settings all the time. So we get higher quality and reduced time spans. At one point we had like forty-five days worth of recordings on one. So they increased the quality levels, to cut it down so we just get the thirty days.
Shaina: And is this real time, or is it a few frames per second?
Paul: Right. If it's just the camera itself that it's recording from, it's a couple of frames per second. If it's recorded on one of the actual desks, it's real time. It's live recording.
Arndale Centre, Manchester
In an ironic twist we discover that the all the security officers at CCTV control room of the Arndale centre were themselves under video and audio surveillance.
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Paul: This one here, this is the one that no one likes. This is the control room camera. (Chris laughs) It monitors everything we do and everything we say in the control room. It's only used for a major instance, for review afterwards to see how we did and what we did, and to see why we did it.
Chris: This is the camera that's up in the corner?
Paul: This is the camera that's in the corner, yeah.
Chris: I didn't think you guys had access to it.
Paul: We come in everyday. We have to see if it's recording and everything is okay. We've got full access to rewind here, copy it straight to CD if we need to. Full audio and everything is recorded.
Paul: Each of the desks on one of these areas here, and on the back desks the same, there is a microphone on each one of those desks. So you've got crystal clear sounds constantly.
Shaina: So wait a minute. You guys do video surveillance to the rest of the mall. But you guys also have audio surveillance?
Paul: And we're under surveillance, yeah.
Shaina: No. But there's audio surveillance on you guys as well.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Arndale Centre, Manchester
The 'If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear' argument that Paul offers is highly simplistic. It's a sanctimonious, snappy sounding response that the masses have picked up from 'official' justifications for everything, from increased investment in CCTV, to biometric profiling, to RFID ID cards. It is a tried and tested way of guilt-tripping people into compromising on essential civil liberties in exchange for imagined, illusive security. The argument operates on the assumption that security and freedom are mutually exclusive. When in truth the debate about surveillance versus privacy, or biometric profiling versus privacy is fundamentally a debate about liberty versus control.
compromise
crime
fear
guilt
intrusive
liberty
prediction
prevention
privacy
risk
security
shortsighted
solution
surveillance
Shaina: Does it freak you out or irritate you that you are under surveillance as well?
Paul: No. Sometimes you forget about it.
Shaina: Yeah?
Paul: Hell yeah. It just doesn't bother you.
Shaina: Cause you're watching two hundred other cameras.
Paul: Oh yeah, yeah. There is that.
Chris: But you can't sit and complain about work or blame the boss. (laughs)
Paul: If you do, you do. They don't... I'm not bothered about it. It doesn't bother me. I've got nothing to hide. As Colin was saying before, right? If you've got nothing to hide, why should you have a problem being recorded?
Shaina: I still have a problem being recorded.
Paul: Yeah? Why? Have you got something to hide? Have you got a guilty conscience about something?
Shaina: No. (Paul laughs) I just value my privacy.
Paul: There is privacy. But what if you were walking down the street. You didn't know you were on camera and someone came up and snatched your bag.
Shaina: I dunno if being caught, having that on camera really helps.
Paul: Well yeah, cause they'd have the person on camera actually snatching your bag.
Shaina: Yeah but in... Say my bag was snatched in India, or in another part of the world where there is no CCTV - the bag will still get snatched cause crime will still exist.
Paul: But the person... Yeah, crime still exists. But the person will be brought to justice. It is more likely for the person being brought to justice when we've got all the cameras.
Shaina: Hmmn, I don't know.
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