ThinkingShift

I’m really shocked by an article that has appeared on ABC News (not!). Doubts have been raised about the usefulness of CCTV cameras in preventing crime. The dude who heads up Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections section (and who should know a thing or two I’d think about visual identification) is saying that billions of dollars have been wasted on a crime prevention tool that is ineffective.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville says only 3% of London street robberies have been solved through using CCTV cams. Worse: he maintains that no thought has been given to how the CCTV images should be used or analysed by police and he goes on to describe London’s CCTV system as an “utter fiasco”. And before we jump up and down and suggest that the Brits don’t know what they’re talking about, Australian criminologists are agreeing with Neville.

Millions of dollars that could have been put toward (let’s see: better hospital and old age care or education) have been thrown down the gurgler in Australia. A police official said: “There is no national database of images of people. So whilst we might have the images, the difficulty we then have is trying to identify who it is and sometimes that isn’t easy and clearly we can do better.”

Professor Paul Wilson is one of Australia’s best known criminologists and he has conducted an extensive study of CCTV cams in Australia (and you know how irate I get about them because there are so many!). Wilson says“It can work as a device to detect criminals in some cases but often the images are not very clear and do not provide material which is good enough to detect or even prosecute people who have committed crimes. We have people suffering mortgage-stress thanks to the sub-prime mortgage debacle. We have homeless people in Australia. We have a hospital system that is a worry - read this article to see why there might be cause for concern. So I really shake my head wondering why we throw away millions in installing these blind eyes on city streets, around ATMs and in office buildings when extensive studies consistently point to the ineffectiveness of CCTV.

Prof Wilson (clearly a smart dude) says: “I think it’s a great tragedy that Australian politicians at the local and state and federal level believe that crime and terrorism and antisocial activity generally, can be stopped by having more and more CCTV cameras. The evidence is very clear that it can’t be and what we’re doing is pouring literally millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into a crime prevention technique which only has very limited results and ignoring other methods of reducing crime“.

We have far more things in society to worry about and address. You can read an interesting e-journal article by Wilson and others on the relationship between crime and CCTV here.

I’ve not heard of Banksy before but I like this guy. He’s a graffiti artist in the UK and, like me, he’s incensed about CCTV cameras being up your nose. He snuck up on a CCTV camera in a Post Office yard off Oxford Street in central London. In broad daylight too. Here’s the really fun bit. Whilst the CCTV cameras were supposedly monitoring, watching, surveilling, intruding - Banksy erected some scaffolding, which reached several stories in height and plastered a huge protest slogan that reads “One Nation Under CCTV”. The CCTV camera (or the hidden faces behind it) apparently didn’t raise the alarm. Perhaps it wasn’t switched on?  I have a suspicion that many CCTV cameras are there to remind us of their presence, but I wonder how many are active. Mmm….anyway…

If you look closely at this wonderful piece of art, you see on the bottom left corner a policeman is taking a photo of the graffiti artist (who is depicted as a boy in a bright red jacket), whilst a dog barks. 

Banksy quietly slipped away, having done this sort of political protest a number of times before. I haven’t been able to find out who Banksy is. A bit of an elusive chap. But I did find a group dedicated to Banksy’s works on Flickr. 

Source & image credit: The Telegraph

I was in Hong Kong for most of last week. I think this must be my 12th visit. I’ve lost count over the years. I’ve always enjoyed its vibrancy and its “Western yet still Eastern” mystique. I found it a bit difficult keeping out of the shopping malls as Hong Kong is one big shopping mecca. Mind you, when I was in Dubai late last year for the first time, I was pretty staggered by the “shop till you drop in the sand” culture they are building over there. I avoided the heat simply by running from one air-conditioned shopping haven to the next! That’s a good strategy if you’re buying up The Brands, not a good one if you’re avoiding them like me.

But I’m pleased to tell you that I discovered a new Hong Kong this visit. Well, more accurately, one that I’d never really bothered looking at before because I was more concerned with snapping up the latest designer handbag. And…to report in…I didn’t buy a single thing. Nada, zilch, zippo.

Instead, I strolled through Kowloon Park with its sculptures and bird aviary (I tried to forget about the bird flu warnings). I wandered into a maze where I found a chap doing elegant Tai Chi movements as his daily ritual. Out in the park, out in the sunshine, surrounded as best you can be in Hong Kong by trees and greenery. I took a photo or two of this chap at eye-level so that only the upper half of his body shows above the greenery of the maze. I spent ages watching him. He was so wrapped up in the moment. He didn’t notice I don’t think the American tourists – four of them shouting and carrying on in the maze whilst everyone else was peaceful and contemplative.

I wandered around Victoria Park. I’d been there before but this time I saw old men wandering off behind the tennis courts and the Olympic-sized swimming pool. Where are they heading I wondered? So I followed. And came across a shady pavilion tucked into some trees. Just outside the pavilion, in the soft streams of sunlight piercing the tree branches, sat a number of high metal racks.

What on earth? Closer inspection revealed glorious songbirds in birdcages hanging on the shadier side of the pavilion. The old men bring their songbirds with them to the park so they too can socialise in the sunshine. Apparently, songbirds are much prized and admired and colourful plumage can command high prices. I discovered a whole market in songbirds: beautifully crafted wooden and bamboo cages, live worms that can be fed to the songbirds in tiny porcelain food bowls. I also found a pebble path to massage the bottom of very tired feet, bliss!

I checked out the Soho area and went up those long escalators to the mid-level area of Lan Kwai Fung and Hollywood Road. A great place to simply watch people. I went to the Graham Street Market and found abundant life under the escalator – bustling shops crammed with Chinese vegetables or ancient Chinese medicines; old Chinese ladies with deep, furrowed lines on their faces but with far more human expression than the botoxed Western woman.

I discovered that there is still some of “old Hong Kong” left. I took plenty of photos and I’ll post some in the next few days. A few people have emailed to ask why on earth I’m on Flickr under a different name – yes, well….you know, it’s my antipathy to revealing all about myself. But maybe….I might provide a link to my Flickr page. Maybe. Meantime, two of my candid people shots accompany this post, along with a photo of an apartment block reflected in an office tower.

I did say earlier this year that I was going to take a slightly different approach to blogging this year. Try to take more of a photo-journalism tack. I’m not sure why I’m suddenly rediscovering photography after so many years. But something is going on.

Oh….and I certainly did notice the CCTV cameras in Hong Kong. Actually, the lack of them or at least they are far less intrusive than those large grey blinking-eye domes I have such an aversion for here in Australia. I spotted them here and there. In shopping malls (before I rushed out to get away from The Brands) but I didn’t note them in the streets and subway areas as much as in Australia. Perhaps I missed them as I was so intent on looking at Hong Kong through the camera lens. But I don’t think so: I think that Hong Kong is less paranoid about security, terrorism and so on. It was a refreshing change for me.

I’ve toyed with the idea of living in Hong Kong for a couple of years and a tempting opportunity has now presented itself. Stay tuned dear reader. You never know, ThinkingShift could be coming to you in Mandarin or Cantonese soon ☺

Shorter posts this week as I’m running a workshop on leadership. But I’ll be eager to get my teeth into the special issue of Surveillance and Society on “The Politics of CCTV in Europe and Beyond”. What’s interesting I think are some of the articles looking at the social aspects of CCTV. The whole argument for CCTV is based on conflictual social relationships ie deviants in society threaten the law-abiding innocent. The presence of CCTV creates or shapes a culture into two populations - those lawfully occupying public space and those unlawfully occupying it. The issue has articles that cover all aspects of this including a great article about CCTV in Lyons, France, which explores whether CCTV is used as a form of xenophobia (targeting black African youths).

Particularly fascinating to me was the Editorial on the long history of the relationship between the photographic image and crime control. So, for example, the first commercially viable photographic technique was patented in Paris in 1839 and, by the 1840s, its potential for identifying and documenting the criminal classes was already recognised. Similarly, with the early days of TV, a UK police superintendent suggested the monitoring and analysis of live TV images of Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding.

For those of us interested in surveillance, a great read with this special issue!

I just had to rant about this. I was actually thrown out of a major Sydney hotel the other day. Yes, me! Now, this was not for diva-like behaviour or dressing badly. Nope. This is how it all started.

I brought my camera into the city so I could take some photos of urban fragments - doors, windows, graffiti, urban art, abandoned and decaying stuff and so on. I don’t take photos of people as they don’t really interest me. So it’s not as though I was about to cruise the streets of Sydney a’la Google Street View, snapping the unsuspecting citizen on some street corner.

I was opposite a particular major hotel - I won’t name the hotel. I was focusing on some archways to the right of the hotel. I wasn’t even focusing on the hotel itself. This dude came over and asked: “what are you doing?”. I felt like saying: “playing a game of golf, what does it look like” but said: “I’m taking photos”. A back and forth conversation then began: why are you taking photos? what are you taking photos of? who are you?

Now, some of you might think I excelled in showing extraordinary patience with this dude. After all, I didn’t even know who he was. I finally lost said patience and asked who on earth are you? Turns out he was one of those dudes who open taxi doors for incoming guests of the hotel.

I then decided to go into the hotel itself and take some photos of windows, vases and so on. I thought it would probably be a smart move to make myself known to the concierge. I showed some ID and told him the truth: that I belong to several amateur photography clubs and wanted to take some photos of their art deco windows. He said “should be okay, but let me check”. A PR dude then materialised, asking the same set of questions.

Once I confirmed that I would not take any photos that would identify the hotel or of people in the foyer, I was told “nope, you can’t take any photos”. I asked: “See that window up there? the top part of it? how about that? It doesn’t show any identifying features”. Nope, was the answer and I was asked to leave.

Undettered, I set off for two well-known buildings in Sydney - both have lovely architectural details and both are major tourist attractions. Although privately owned, I’ve seen many a tourist happily taking videos and snapping away. First building - I was up the top level trying to get a perspective shot when a security guy came along. Same questions: who, what, why?

Standing about 12 metres to my right was a guy taking a video. I asked the security guy about this - if you’re asking me what I’m taking photos of, are you asking that dude too? And what about those two ladies over there taking photos of the ceiling?

Get ready for the reply: “Oh, they’re tourists”. Okay. So tourists (who of course could be terrorists masquerading) are allowed to take photos and videos but an average citizen can’t? Despite protestations that I’m simply taking photos of architectural features, I was turfed out.

Off to the next building, feeling a bit like an urban terrorist. Up on the top floor. All alone. This is good I think to myself; I should be able to take some good shots of balcony features. What I didn’t notice was the CCTV camera behind me (yeah, I know: me of all people not spotting CCTV). Just as I was about to snap away, another security dude materialised. Same questions; same outcome for me.

Now, I realise that security has tightened up since 9/11 and being a lawyer, I realise that buildings are private property. I’m told by photographer colleagues that they are well-prepared for interrogation, so they go armed with ID; a fluorescent jacket so they look “official” and therefore might avoid getting asked questions; they even take a photo album along to prove they are simply taking photos. Guess I’ll have to kit myself out in camouflage gear from now on!

So the humble, amateur photographer interested in exploring architecture and the textures and urban fragments of city life is reduced to taking photos like these:

Crap photos of public seats and fire hydrants because these urban features don’t seem to draw the attention of skittish security types. I would, however, think that a creative terrorist could think of something to do with public seats and fire hydrants!

Obviously, the hotel in question was also concerned about image: God forbid the hotel should be photographed by an amateur photographer. But I also drew some worrying glances from people on the street who saw me taking photos of things like fire hydrants, stuff abandoned on the street and so on. And I had to be particularly careful not to be in any way looking as though I was taking a street view with people in it. One dude asked me “why are you taking a photo of me?”, when I was taking a photo of peeling paint (he just wandered accidentally into the shot).

I’m always told when I carry on about surveillance and privacy that people don’t really care if their photo is taken as they wander down the street. People don’t mind if Google Street View snaps them or if a CCTV camera freeze frames them. My experience wandering the streets of Sydney tells me perhaps otherwise.

I realise that buildings imply security, hence the questioning. But tourists are allowed to take photos and amateur photographers aren’t? I was even bailed up by a city officer whilst trying to snap a public garbage bin. So I’m not sure what photos you can and can’t take these days. Guess it’s back to the flowers, the butterflies, the cats and the dogs (and make that street dogs and cats, because owners might even object to a candid shot of kitty being taken!).

You may have noticed no recent posts on privacy and surveillance issues. That’s largely because I’ve been reflecting on surveillance issues from a complexity perspective and crafting my thoughts into some semblance of an argument - expect a post soon.

But Popular Mechanics January issue ran a cover story on new high-tech video surveillance cameras. Scary to read what these new style cameras are capable of. To give you a taste: used by banks, hotels and retail stores, “searchable surveillance” systems automatically create a template of every face that passes in front of the electronic eye. It creates a mathematical model based on the geometry of each person’s face and compares to a central bank of images of known suspects. But the really scary bit I think is that this same technology can also automatically log and analyse events based on an automated object recognition analysis of an entire scene—for example, Joe Blogs met with Jane Doe at 12:45 pm; Doe arrived in a blue car. Because the cost of data storage is now much cheaper, several months’ worth of data can be analysed in minutes.

In the good old days of village life, eyes were of course everywhere and so your neighbour could lift the curtains and spy on you. But contemporary society is Government and Big Business society. It’s an era of Government and business watching us via surveillance cameras in shopping centres, on public streets and even within organisations. But surveillance is not a two-way street; we can’t easily turn the cameras back on them. I was recently in a hotel foyer taking photos of some lovely art deco features and was busted - some security dude wanted to know who, what, when and why. Fortunately, I wasn’t hauled off in handcuffs but it did get nasty for a moment!

But I think the really interesting thing about contemporary society is that we are a video-enabled population. We have camera phones, we can upload a video to YouTube in seconds. So we can turn the cameras back on government and big business and find, for example, the “don’t tase me bro” incident a huge sensation on YouTube (where University of Florida police used a taser on a student). In fact, we have more tools in our hands than those who plant surveillance cameras around us. And we have the distribution channel of YouTube. So whilst we are in the grip of the surveillance society, surveillance tools have become democraticised.

But Government and big business will fight back. Police officers for instance don’t like being snapped by a camera phone perhaps over-zealously frisking someone down or roughing someone up. Retail stores don’t like you taking footage of a security guard dealing with an alleged shoplifter. And, as I found out, hotels are a bit skittish about you taking photos of art deco windows.

In the US for example, HR1955, the Homegrown Terrorism and Violent Radicalization Prevention Act, was rushed through in late 2007. Known as the “Thought Crime Bill”, this is a dangerous piece of legislation IMHO. It’s a piece of legislation aimed at preventing home grown terrorism but its wording is so vague that if a person posts let’s say a video onto YouTube outlining their political views, that person may be inciting violence and the US government, under the legislation, may have the power to take down said video.

HR1955 is aimed at the internet and defines “homegrown terrorism” and “violent radicalization”. The first term simply means the use, planned or threatened use of violence by a US citizen based or operating within US borders; the second term is the more worrying and means “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious or social change”. (You can read the full text here and check the status of the Bill).

Now the truly scary bit is that HR1955 sets up a National Commission and a network of academic researchers to define certain ideologies as ‘thoughtcrimes’ and it encompasses the concept of ‘pre-crime’. The network of academic researchers and the commission will provide the basis for identifying certain ideologies as “thought-crimes”. Forgot Orwellian, this is more Minority Report with Nazi overtones (Note to Neo-Nazis I recently dealt with - don’t bother emailing me).

You really need to be aware of HR1955. If you’re too lazy to wade your way through the hefty legal text, then check out the video on LiveLeak (just under 10 mins) or watch this idiot’s guide on YouTube:

I found this YouTube video by a young Gothic-looking woman really got to me, particularly what she has to say about her son - I sometimes feel like her, no-one listens or cares about our loss of privacy:

This is anti-freedom of speech legislation. Nazi Germany created the crime of “Volksverhetzung”, which basically meant stirring up the populace through hate mongering or mobilizing against the status quo. Volksverhetzung is simply another term for radicalization.

So whilst the average citizen has its own tools of surveillance and can indulge in sousveillance, proposed legislation like HR1955 (from my reading of it) could be used to:

• suppress and prosecute US based groups engaged in quite legal but unpopular political activism. Who will judge it to be unpopular? The National Commission and academic researchers. So this may see groups like environmental activists (who big business would love to silence); Islamic sympathizers, anti-abortion activists and various right-wing organisations busted for “thought crimes’.

• s899B states: “The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens”. The internet is supposed to be free of Government interference, but not for long by the looks of this section of the Bill. So you could see YouTube videos taken down for example.

• the term “violent radicalization” is vaguely defined and leaves the door open to many interpretations. Socialism, communism, Neo-Nazis, white supremest groups could all be classified for example as extremist belief systems depending on your viewpoint. Heck, maybe even animal-liberationalists and people flinging themselves onto whale-hunting boats will be seen as extremists.

• s899A(4) defines “ideologically based violence” and is so vaguely defined that you are left wondering what constitutes violence. Is it civil disobedience? Is it a peaceful protest rally?

I’d like to think that ThinkingShift readers are concerned about societal issues whether this be environmental or threats to our civil liberties. If I’m right and you are: do yourself a favour and become familiar with HR1955. This post is just an alert and a summary for you. Then tell me what you think of HR1955.

Image source: Popular Mechanics

Fortress Britain is an apt title - UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has just unveilled (wait for it) new border control security plans that would require hapless travellers passing through electronic check points to cough up to 90 (yep, that’s right 90) pieces of information. This would include information like credit card details, travel plans, email addresses, contact phone numbers and the like.

So….the idea as far as I can tell is that when you book your ticket with the travel agent, the agent would be collecting all this sort of information, which is then accessible by police, customs and immigration officials. Sorry, but I’m not comfortable with a whole lot of dudes knowing my credit card details. If you decide that this is all too much and opt for rail travel around the UK instead - forget it, you’ll still be subject to increased passenger screening at railway stations.

Brown is clearly making a fortress out of the UK. He’s announced plans to redesign buildings that could be terrorist targets making them “blast resistant”. And this is what it might be like to get into a public building in the future - external security checkpoint, vehicle exclusion zone, barriers made from concrete and the like.

And the new UK Border Agency will be given new powers of arrest and biometric visas (including fingerprint technology) will be introduced for all foreign citizens needing visas. At the moment, UK officials can hold a suspected “terrorist” for 28 days without charge (double the previous 14 days), but the Government is seeking to extend this period.

Now, this new UK Border Agency interests me. It’s a single agency passenger screening system uniting customs, immigration and visa procedures and consisting of 25,000 staff. From what I’ve read, Trusted Borders, a consortium of technology and service providers, will provide the technology for the passenger screening system, which will be based on fingerprint visas. So before you even enter the UK, the system will have screened passengers against immigration, customs and various watch lists. Apparently, staff from immigration, customs and visa agencies are being transferred into this new agency and with only 3 hours training or less are expected to be proficient at passenger profiling.

And if you go off and read Brown’s statement on national security you can get a sense of the mind-set. Brown refers to “the measures we are taking at home to root out terrorism and strengthen the resilience of communities to resist extremist influences..” and more policing and intelligence to “win hearts and minds“. And from now until 2011, Brown has pledged “an additional £240 million will finance counter-terrorism policing, which is focused as much on preventing the next generation of terrorists as on pursuing current targets“.

Hearts and minds will be won by waging a battle. Brown envisages “..a generational challenge that requires sustained work over the long term, through a range of actions in schools, colleges, universities, faith groups and youth clubs, by engaging young people through the media, culture, sport and arts, and by acting against extremist influences operating on the internet and in institutions from prisons and universities to some places of worship“. And he hints that the “governance” of mosques, which have existed in the UK for over 100 years, will be “strengthened”. And a new forum of head teachers from schools would be established to find ways to protect pupils from extremist propaganda.

Now, I think we need to give a cautious welcome to this crackdown. I’m not saying terrorists don’t exist. But there are two models of struggle. The first is the violent extremist model and if you meet this with defensive measures, it goes a long way to feeding into this extremist model by potentially escalating violent extremist efforts to overcome any “anti-terrorist” measures. And security measures that could be construed as “anti-Muslim” by Muslim communities or other ethnic groups could engender more hatred and violence, leading to the UK becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.

The other model is surely non-violent responses to terrorism. By understanding typologies of violence, sources of conflict, by differentiating between nonviolent Islam and Islamic Terrorism, understanding the grievances of people and knowing how discontent can be exploited and turned into hatred, refusing to support countries that don’t promote democracy or human rights - surely these responses would start to attack the roots of terrorism rather than erecting e-borders and increasing surveillance of citizens in the hope that terrorists will be flushed out.

The UK is fast becoming a no travel zone for me. It’s becoming travel terror. And if you look or act “different” - watch out.

Source: image credit BBC News, Washington Post, KableNet

Maybe someone can help me out. I’ve been searching for some authoritative research on the efficacy of public webcams or CCTV cameras. Because I’m convinced that they are pretty well useless in discouraging crime. Maybe they give some people a sense of security but to others, like me, it’s all about social control. Law enforcement officials and politicians assure us that CCTV watches over urban dysfunction and is a major contributor to crime control. The unblinking staring eyes are in shopping malls, car parks, restaurants (at least the one I was in the other night), cinema complexes. Most of us hardly seem to notice them. Most of us seem disinterested, unconcerned. The usual comment is “if you have nothing to hide, why worry about them”.

If you’re not concerned about them, wouldn’t you at least like to think that CCTV cameras are the strong deterrent they’re said to be? Or wouldn’t you like to believe that there are minimum regulations for use of CCTV cameras? Or that the dudes behind the cameras receive appropriate training? Or that the camera snaps the highest quality images? I’ll take it that you’ll answer yes to these questions.

So then……perhaps check out the first official report by the UK Government’s Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers entitled National CCTV Strategy. You can download the full report from the Home Office’s Crime Reduction website. It’s just been released. The report reviews the use of CCTV in the UK and is the only official review I’ve managed to find. If you know of others, leave a comment.

Here’s a summary of the report, which to my mind underscores the concern we should all have about CCTV/public webcams:

• 80% of cameras produce images of such poor quality that they are of no use for detection purposes - wouldn’t this make you a little worried given that law enforcement rely on CCTV as an identification device?
• it seems that the exact number of CCTV cameras and their locations is an unknown factor
• the original use for CCTV was largely in detecting crime but now the cameras are multi-tasking - recording vehicle number plates or monitoring groups of people in shopping malls. Somehow authorities forgot to tell us that original crime detection use has been co-opted and widened into something more sinister.
• there is no quantitative evidence in this report that I can see that substantiates the usual claim that CCTV helps to reduce crime
• camera to archive: little thought seems to be given to whole-of-life-cycle CCTV ie how long are the images retained?
• there’s seems to be no idea of how private webcams are used or who is using them
• there are no digital CCTV standards, including what is required of CCTV systems
• there are no regulations governing the use of private CCTV systems

Now, I don’t know about you, but this report gives me no comfort and in fact alarms me further about public webcams - they’re uncontrolled, the exact whereabouts of many CCTV cameras is unknown, and they are being used not so much for crime control as for social control.

Libby Brooks in a Guardian Unlimited article makes an excellent point. Aside from being an attack on civil liberties, CCTV alters our relationship with public space. To quote: “Those who are most aware of being watched respond in ways that only render them more vulnerable to sanction: teenagers hoist up their hoodies, demonstrators cover their faces on marches. Much more insidious is the way that our misplaced confidence in an omnipresent witnessing eye apparently makes us feel absolved of any responsibility to intervene ourselves.

Britain has become a witness culture, inured to watching and being watched. Be it Big Brother or posting friends’ antics on YouTube, our leisure time has become increasingly infected with the imperative to expose ourselves and others. No activity, no individual, is deemed valid without an audience. So maybe acquiescence to a constant mechanical witness should not come as such a surprise”.

And it’s that notion of absolving of responsibility to intervene or care that I wish to explore in future posts.

Video Sniffin. Have you heard of this term? I hadn’t until recently but I’ve been sniffing around to find out more about it and it’s kept me away from the darker side of surveillance. Video sniffin is a term that refers to the practice of picking up the public signals being broadcast by wireless CCTV (aka hacking wireless CCTV). As with a recent post where I told you about the film Look, using images from CCTV, here’s another example of people using public webcams to create art, in this case a short film. Makes sense to me: why buy expensive video equipment when there are millions of public webcams around to use?

MediaShed, the first “free media” space to open in the east of the UK, uses Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and waste electronic equipment. So it’s taking accessible media apart, reusing it without limitations and creating an artistic expression. Some members of MediaShed decided to use CCTV to make a film. Using cheap video receivers, they sniffed out 24 public webcams or hotspots and used the CCTV cameras to make a film called The Commercial. You can view it here. So you’ll see that young people are using technology, that is normally surveilling their activities, for creative purposes.

MediaShed also headed into a shopping centre in Manchester to make a film combining free-media with free-running. Parkour or free-running involves fluid uninterrupted movement adapting motion to obstacles in the environment. Like free-media, free-running makes use of and re-energises the infrastructure of the city. Professional parkour breakin’ crew, Methods of Movement, choreographed a performance that was filmed in the shopping centre over three consecutive nights. The film was shot using only the existing in-house CCTV network of 160 cameras operated from the central control room, with a soundtrack created entirely from the sounds and noises recorded during the performance. The film is called The Duellists and you can see it here. How good is this??!!

Source: MediaShed

This is the premise of a new film that has me very, very intrigued. It’s intriguing because it’s a film shot from the point of view of surveillance cameras and puts us on the other side of the camera - it takes us on a voyeuristic journey, nosing around in other people’s lives, watching their embarrassing moments. It captures the spectator view of today’s society really - we are all spectators watching people embarrass themselves on reality TV shows; checking out the latest photos of celebrities wearing no knickers; zooming in on some poor sod who’s having plastic surgery on TV in an effort to look 10 years younger. We are sometimes shocked, or we snigger at someone’s mistake, or we cringe when the up close and personal shots of surgery pop onto the screen. But above all, we are titillated. You’re observing things that perhaps are best left private. But privacy is not an option today; not when you think that in the US, for example, there are 30 million surveillance cameras that generate more than 4 billion hours of footage every week. The average American runs the chance of being snapped by a webcam 200 times per day: in department stores, on the streets…even in changing rooms. The cameras snoop; they are relentless.

Wait a minute: did I say changing rooms? yep, sure did. I have often wondered whether the unblinking eye captures you as you’re undressing in a changing room. I do look out for them I must admit. This is a place where we think we are alone - admiring our image or berating ourselves for not losing a few kilos.

But perhaps not: the website for the film, Look, has posted a number of videos of people caught unawares, in private moments. If you look at this video of a woman undressing in a changing room, then you might hyperventilate at the thought that you too could one day be captured undressing. If you choose to look at it, you will probably have a sense that you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing; observing an individual’s private moment; but maybe you can’t resist looking. WARNING: do not look at it if you think you might find it offensive.

But there are good aspects to surveillance cameras - I’d be the first to admit this despite my carry on about how we are in the grip of surveillance. Here’s a video from the Look site - WARNING - someone dies in this video, so think about it before you choose to watch it. This is our society in its dark moments. The alleged shooter was identified, that’s the positive part; but again, we are participating in someone’s life when we watch it, really someone’s last moments on Earth.

These two videos to me show the polar extremes of the surveillance society - voyeuristic yet protective. The film, Look, focuses on people’s lives as captured by surveillance cameras and shows the things we all get up to when we don’t think anyone is watching. The film follows several characters whose lives all intersect. Writer-director, Adam Rifkin, didn’t use real webcam footage. Rather he used unknown actors and placed the cameras in locations and angles where real surveillance cameras might be placed. He then degraded the film in post-production to make it look like real webcam footage.

The site also has a surveillance map and is encouraging people in the US to add to the map the location of any webcam they spot. What a lovely twist - citizens spying on the webcams! And you can watch a powerful trailer of the film, Look, on the Threat Level blog.

Source: Threat Level