CCTV Social: Day II Session 4
Cinematographer: Shaina Anand
Duration: 00:18:26; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 219.410; Saturation: 0.048; Lightness: 0.200; Volume: 0.129; Cuts per Minute: 25.702; Words per Minute: 173.409
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. 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 they discussed symptoms, anxieties and inoculations about their 'public health,' under surveillance. These therapy sessions seemed to work both ways, for the participants as well as the security officers.
Phil, an employee of BAE systems (which designs aeroplanes for the RAF) and Isabel, an employee of Cornerhouse in Manchester, indulge in a long conversation with Joe. They talk about the pervasiveness and effect of surveillance. We get a disturbing glimpse into the voyeuristic and intrusive aspect of CCTV when, while describing the process of ID'ing people, Joe zooms in on a homeless couple huddled behind a trash can and takes a still photo. Their discussion revolves around issues of information, control, biometric profiling and privacy in times marked by obsession with risk prediction, fear and paranoia.
Joe explains the working of the CCTV set-up to Phil.
Related Links:
Data Retention
Data Retention: Data Protection Act
Code of Practices
Joe: You wouldn't believe the quality of it.
Phil: How does it work? Is it by street, or by...?
Joe: Just by numbers basically. You get to know where they are, right? The numbers and what street it's on, and they are all recording twenty-four hours a day. It's just a matter of minutes. If anything happens, take a tape out and look at it.
Isabel: And how long are the images kept after...?
Joe: Twenty-eight days.
Isabel: Twenty-eight days.
Joe: Unless it's a crime, a serious incident. Then it's archived for five years.
Isabel: All right.
archive
camera
data
data protection
description
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footage
images
information
process
quality
retention
surveillance
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Camera 21 is out of order. Shifts to camera 13, pans right and zooms in to the top of a building where camera 21 is fixed. Zooms out.
A look at the all too obvious pervasiveness and intrusiveness of CCTV.
Related Links:
CCTV fiasco
Problems with the Panopticon
Be Quiet: The surveillance cameras might Hear you!
CCTV surveillance is ineffective: Debate gets more data
Isabel: So how many cameras are there?
Joe: I think we ring in about fifty of them at the moment, but it's only gonna get bigger. They're gonna invest more.
Isabel: Right. (laughs)
Joe: Lot more. A couple of them are not working at the moment, as you can see. So you said... Where do you live local?
Isabel: I live in Hulme, in Redbricks.
Joe: All right, yeah.
Shaina: Can we see...?
Isabel: Well, there used to be one. (laughs)
Joe: We could if twenty-one was working, but we can't get it going today for some reason...
(Camera 21 which hasn't been working all day is stuck with a top angle view with a panoramic view up to the horizon.)
Isabel: Which one is...? Where is twenty one?
Joe: That's on top of that building up there.
Isabel: Ah, yeah. Oh, all right! How far do they see?
Joe: That can see planes landing at the airport.
Isabel: You're kidding! (laughs)
Joe: That's how powerful it is.
Isabel: God! Because there used to be one next to just... Right next to mine really, at the end of my street and...
Joe: So you live more up this way, yeah? Down Stratford road. (Camera 26 zooms in)
Isabel: Just after the bridge.
Joe: Yeah.
Isabel: But the residents protested, I think, and they took it off. But it didn't make any difference did it? (laughs)
Joe: No, it can be seen; still be seen.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
CCTV
cameras
extent
panopticon
pervasive
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watchers
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Phil: Can you get as close as faces?
Joe: Yeah, you can. Let's have a look. (zooms in on a man crossing the road with a newspaper in hand) You can get positive good ID's on them. (Camera 19 zooms in on a man crossing a street.)
Isabel: God!
Chris: What's he reading?
Isabel: It's horrible!
Joe: You've got the locals begging. So we can take pictures of them as well. So I just took a picture there. So for future reference, if they ever say that he wasn't there at the time, we've got a picture of them. Which is like, " there you go," the time and the date of when the picture was clicked. So it's quite good. (Joe zoomed camera 19 to a young homeless couple holding each other, huddled together behind a trash can. He gets really close and takes a still. Zooms out and then plays the still back.)
Phil: And do you think it does reduce crime?
Joe: It is a bit of a deterrent, yeah. The locals know where all the cameras are. They know the area basically, what cameras are where things like that.
(the phone rings)
Joe: Hello.
Shaina: What brings you here?
Phil: I'm just interested in the way society is going with civil liberties, really. We seem to be under surveillance all the time; we seem to be heading towards people taking DNA...
Shaina: Five year old kids.
Phil: Yeah. And ID cards - just how much information does the government want from people?
Shaina: Total.
Phil: It just seems... It strikes me that it doesn't maybe reduce crime but I think it's looking at the wrong end of crime sometimes. I know that you need to be able to stop things at source, but if you look back perhaps there are things that we could do to prevent it from that end as well.
Joe: Do you mean like more police on the streets?
Phil: No. I mean looking at why there is a source of crime? Why people do it in the first place? It just seems to be dealing with the symptoms rather than the cause.
Joe: Yeah, I know what you're saying.
We get a disturbing look at the voyeuristic and invasive side of CCTV, as Joe zooms in on an unsuspecting homeless couple huddled behind a trash can. Phil talks about the danger of an increasing obsession with 'risk prediction,' the desire of living in a 'crime-free' society and the compromises on civil liberties that such a 'dream' demands.
Related Links:
Baby ASBOS?
Paranoia??
DNA database of 5 year olds: Potential offenders???
UK Schools fingerprinting children
Public Comments on DNA databasing of kids.
Does CCTV reduce crime??
CCTV cameras don't work.
CCTV displaces crime instead of reducing it.
Orwellian
biometric
community
control
crime
databasing
dataveillance
discriminatory
information
invasion
local
monitored
myopic
orevention
other
outsiders
paranoia
police
power
prediction
privacy
profiling
replacement
shortsighted
surveilled
voyeuristic
watched
Isabel's opinions on CCTV typifies the popular discourse about the choice between liberty and security. It is a political rhetoric that is flawed, there is no dichotomy between 'liberty' and 'security' since one cannot exist without the other. The fundamental debate between surveillance and privacy is actually a debate between freedom and control.
Related Links:
Official Secrets Act
Troubled History of the Official Secrets Act
OSA wiki
1984 Today
1984 Full Text Link
1984 wiki
1984 Summary
Privacy in the age of video surveillance
CCTV threat to privacy
Surveillance and Civil Liberties
Big Brotherly love is totally displaced
Joe: A lot of it is drug related, innit?
Phil: Well, I don't know.
Joe: It's easy money, innit, to mug someone? Take a phone, or an ipod, or a laptop?
Phil: We do have these at work; we have them in the areas where we work. I work in the Aerospace in Chadderton.
Joe: Oh, yeah?
Phil: We have these all over the place there as well.
Joe: And obviously they'll record also twenty-four seven.
Phil: Yeah.
Chris: Is it generally a closed site where you work?
Phil: We're covered by the Official Secrets Act. Because we work in the military, so the RAF demands that everything is locked down. I just think it's a bit 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'-ish.
Joe: This is ten years old, so it's due for an upgrade basically, which is as far as we know. They just pulled a building down here - Roxford. And a brand new building apparently; we are going to be relocating there with a whole new system. But that's word say; how true it is, we don't know.
Isabel: I don't know, I find that quite depressing. (laughs) To be watched all the time is just...
Joe: So do you think it's a good thing that someone is up there operating this? Like in the night?
Isabel: I don't know because there is kind of... There is this thing... For instance, cause I live in Hulme, so I go back really late at night, etc. And there is nobody and there is a CCTV camera, but that's a private one. I think it's the hotel one. And it's kind of weird if I walk on my own and it's dark then I think, "Ah! Right, okay, well at least you know that if anything happens, there is a trace."
Joe: At least you know someone's watching.
Isabel: But at the same time it's kind of... It's just... You know, my neighbours did that at some point. They had a group of people at the end of the street all the time, late at night. I'd rather have that, and then have cameras where you don't know who operates them. You don't know how long things are kept. You don't know how linked they are.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
bias
crime
discriminatory
gaze
ineffective
intrusive
invasion
liberty
perception
prediction
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Isabel expresses concern over the concentration of 'personal information' in the hands of the government and other private agencies. Shaina talks about the biometric test that she had to go through as part of the visa application process for entry into the UK. It's an indicator of the radical shake-up of EU's border security that is part of a plan to crack down on 'terrorism' and illegal immigration.
Related Links:
Privacy,Identity and New Technology
the biggest threat to freedom: your government!
A report on Surveillance Society
Border Surveillance
the technologies of "war on terror"
EU plans Biometric border checks
Biometrics: Who's watching you?
Isabel: You know, I was talking to people where we were talking about the amount of information that everybody gathered about everybody. The government, commercial the
Nectar Card, all these kinds of things. And then it was... Well, it wasn't fine, but it's fine as long as they are not all linked. But if all systems start getting linked, that's it you have no expectation of privacy.
Joe: I do think in the future it will be linked. Everything will be linked up.
Isabel: And that is really scary.
Shaina: When we came into the country, right? Well, we need visas and I've been to the UK ten times, I've had visas before but I had to go in to the visa office in Bombay to get a visa again and nobody... And normally you know your visa expires and you just need to out it in a drop box with an application. But they've changed the rules and the UK needs biometrics. They're one step ahead of United States. United States asks for a forefinger print. This was all ten fingers and an iris scan.
Isabel: Really!
Shaina: So I spent one whole day at the visa office getting the iris scan and the ten fingers. And then you know, going from Heathrow terminal four to one... lots of biometrics. So they track you now with biometrics as well.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
biometrics
border protection
civil liberties
control
dataveillance
discriminatory
ethnic
information
intrusive
minorities
power
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racial
security
Isabel: But that's what it's like the '1984' example, etc. It's fine when there are rules and regulations, etc. Again there is all these other places where there is data, etc. But it relies on... "The system is there," you know what I mean. So if one day things go horribly wrong and there is one person at the head of the state or whatever, it's kind of "the system is there" to be used.
Joe: But it does get used to your advantage basically. It's like, if you got robbed on the street and you see cameras, you'd want to... "Has it been picked up?"
Isabel: Oh yeah, of course. Oh no, I know that's why it's quite interesting. Because I've got really ambivalent feelings. But then again, before when we didn't have the camera and there was... I don't know. It's kind of...
Joe: They are a deterrent.
Shaina: I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow. Where was it you said you worked?
Phil: BAE Systems. They used to be... It's aircraft manufacturers.
Shaina: Okay. And so what were you saying about the Official Secrets Act?
Phil: Yeah, we work very close with the military, the RAF... But yeah, so we build aircrafts for them. We have design authority for a couple of aircrafts they have, and so there are certain regulations that we have to follow. Where the Official Secrets Act comes into play, we all have to sign it.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Related Links:
Official Secrets Act
Troubled History of the Official Secrets Act
OSA wiki
choice
control
discriminatory
government
information
knowledge
liberty
monitoring
paranoia
power
secrecy
security
surveillance
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Phil: So I know all about security. I've really mixed emotions about it. It's whether you get the figures of crime and then you introduce this thing, and then see what they do to the figures. Do they go up? Or do they stay the same? Is it really useful?
Joe: We don't really get involved with that; facts and figures are with the police. We do go to a lot of meetings with them, like when they have different operations. And we have to attend the meetings at the police station basically. How can I put it? They give you the intelligence of whom they're looking for, and if we do pick him up, we will get in touch with them. Follow it on.
Phil: So they do give you images of people?
Joe: They do, yeah. They do give us images.
Related Links:
CCTV doesn't solve crime
CCTV doesn't work
London cameras don't reduce crime, so why have them?
CCTV
cooperation
crime
effectiveness
information
linked
prevention
profiling
security
sharing
solution
statistically
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Phil: Can you tell when things are going to happen?
Joe: Can't do that, can you? But when you are watching, you know when the signs are going to start for a fight, or a mugging, or something. Yeah, you do. You tend to pick up on a lot of things. Sometimes you have like three fights going on at the same time, on a busy night. Like, could have a fight outside the pub, (switches camera to show nightclub locations) you could have one at the students union, and one at the Zoo. And it has happened when they've gone off three different locations.
Phil: I'm sure they are heated debates.
Joe: No, they are fights, believe me.
(laughter)
Joe: Yeah, so you just got to prioritise basically, which is, which one to film. If I'm filming a fight on here, this camera here is still recording the action and also that camera is still recording the action; so it's just a matter of taking the tape out. And doing a copy for the police if they need it for the arrest or anything.
Phil: When the police have a copy...
Joe: Yes?
Phil: Then it's down to them to interpret what's going on.
Joe: Yes.
Phil: Yeah, okay. Your duty is just to record.
Joe: Yeah, but we also can be called up to court as witnesses.
Phil: Yeah, okay.
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Crime prediction
Watching the Watchers
A Surveillance society?
Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age
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CCTV
crime
effectiveness
experience
instinct
legal
monitoring
paranoia
prediction
prevention
violence
witnesses
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Shaina: Has that happened to both of you?
Steve: As a witness to what we've seen on CCTV? Yeah.
Shaina: So it's not just the recording, but your eyes and what you've seen.
Steve: Because you are actually physically moving the cameras and you are telling the police what you've seen. So, in a sense, you fill out a statement just as though you were a witness.
Steve: So you could be filming something knowing full well that something is going to happen in that place and there is nothing you can do about it; so you just carry on filming. And then you get on the phone to the police and tell them and you know it's gonna happen, you can see it's gonna happen but there is nothing you can do. All you can do is just carry on.
Under the code of practices for most CCTV set-ups, the CCTV operators are required to attend court as a witness for the police or other persons bringing about a prosecution in relation to an incident.
CCTV
crime
helplessness
ineffectiveness
law
legal
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prediction
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violence
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Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Related Links:
Surveillance in Public Spaces by Public Authorities and the Protection of Human Rights
Surveillance technologies, privacy in public, and reasonable expectations of privacy in judicial reasoning
Surveilance Society goes Global
Steve: The flats that are across the road there; we've had stuff being thrown down from the top floor. People have been injured, this, that and the other. So yeah we've had to zoom in (into flats and windows) trying to get a quick ID. But then you have to log everything, you've got to account for everything, you've got to cover your own backside, justify why you did that. If they come along and you have a review at that time and they'll say, "Well we think you zoomed in just a little too long for that," you've got to try and answer it. You've got to be very very careful.
Phil: So there's two sets of legal requirements, is it? You can't go into a personal domain, but anybody who is on the street is fair game?
Steve: It's not so so much that they're fair game - you could go into a personal domain to some extent if there is a danger coming from a personal domain. Like, say someone is standing in a balcony and throwing bottles down on someone, which we had happening on that building - yeah, you try to get someone in the act of doing that. One, they're committing a criminal offence, so you try to get an ID of them. Obviously, if you pan on to that building and don't see anything, you've got to zoom out. But if you do see someone doing that, you're quite entitled law-wise, you know to zoom in get an identification, get them committing the act, and then pass on the details to the police. Plus you're obliged to get the full scale of things like you zoom in and ID him throwing the bottles down, but then get it to where he's throwing them and then zoom back out.
CCTV
crime
criminal act
evidence
identify
invasion
law
legislation
privacy
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Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Phil: What I'm saying is anybody on the street you can photograph or follow?
Steve: Well, following I think... If I'm just generally scanning somewhere, I zoom in get a quick ID. If they are up to nothing, you can move on again. You can't linger on someone for any length of time zoomed in. Say, like if that was a person, I can't zoom in and stay there fully zoomed in and leave it there; I can't do that if that was a person.
Phil: Unless there's a crime.
Steve: Unless you suspect that they may be up to no good, but you still got to justify it. I mean don't get me wrong 'being nosy' could be a good thing to some extent because it's human nature to be inquisitive. Somebody might catch your eye and you might think, "Oh that's not quite all right." And that said, what's the difference between 'being nosy' and instinct? The two are the same. It's till what lengths you take that, that being nosy.
Related Links:
Public Privacy: Camera Surveillance of Public Places and the Right to Anonymity
Protecting privacy in public? Surveillance technologies and the value of public places
Civil liberties: surveillance and privacy
crime
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legislation
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Isabel: Yeah but... I think with that, it's more what we were talking about with the DNA, etc. It's kind of, 'Oh well, if you've not done anything you are not in any danger.' Well yeah, but what you've done... That is very dependent...
Steve: Like I said, they're not there to pry and...
Isabel: Yeah, but before - smoking inside, I hadn't done anything. But now if I smoke inside, I've done something, you know what I mean.
Steve: Oh I know.
Isabel: It's kind of... It's all the... Yeah, until people decide that doing something is really...
Steve: But they're there to protect and help the majority, not the minority. Unfortunately, it's the minority that causes the problem, which is the necessity for it, in my mind.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Related Links:
The arguments for systematic erosion of privacy: If you've done nothing wrong...
Response to: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"
Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide
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Chris: Hey Steve, so are we being filmed from another...? So you're being watched as well while you are doing this? Is there a camera here that's looking at...?
Steve: Not inside here. There's one in the corridor where we have to sign when we're coming through, that determines who's in and out here at any time. They have said when we get a new control room, cause it will be all renovated, and there will be cameras inside. People will be watching the watchers as they say.
Shaina: (laughs)
Steve: We could have the ultimate in face recognition. Yeah, I mean you can have as many computers as you want or cameras, but there's no substitute for human instinct.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Related Links:
Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street
Participatory Panopticon
The Blair Watch Project
Souveillance
biometrics
control
facial
identity
monitoring
privacy
recognition
surveillance
technology
watchers
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Phil: Do you ever get requests from the public to look at, or claim?
Steve: On the odd occasion, yeah. Every member of the public has the right to, if they think they've been followed by a CCTV camera. They have to report or request (for the tape). They've got to request whichever department appropriate, wherever the cameras are, and that footage then will be shown to them. But bear in mind that if there is anyone else in the footage, they will have to be blurred out, made unidentifiable. And everyone has got the right to that, that's covered in the Data Protection Act.
Phil: Irrespective of what they want to use it for.
Steve: You could be walking down the road and you see a camera, and you run across and we could be thinking maybe ASBO but not too sure. They might have just followed like that - it's not following him, it just moved across. I'm not following that particular person, I'm just looking across the area. Well, he can request that footage but everyone else who is identifiable has to be blurred out. Now well I think if you go down there and you see a camera moving across like that while you were walking on the road like that, I think you would be a wee bit paranoid if you want to request footage of it. I could understand it maybe if you stood there and you could see this pointing down at you and following you around as you walk down the rails. Then you could say, 'Well why? Why was it following me, I've done nothing wrong.' Just walking down the street and you see it move; that's not enough.
Related Links:
Data Protection Act
Surveillance and Racial profiling
De facto Racial Profiling
data
invasion
justify
legislation
privacy
protection
right
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Shaina: This is a public street! This is a public library! This is public and I'm a citizen and it's mine! In the UK, because of the Queen, because there's no sense of public property, right? It's all the crown. There's a Crown's Court, it's the Queen's land, there's not such a... I mean, there's complete freedom here. It's not like it's not a liberal society; it's amongst the most liberal. But there's this understanding that we're not citizens, that we're not the public, we're 'subjects.' And that's been a reason why people have passively accepted a lot of this...
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