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An Imaginative Use For CCTVs
An anonymous reader writes "Everyone knows we're being watched by CCTVs everywhere — particularly in the UK — and virtually everyone (at least on Slashdot) complains about that fact. But have you ever stopped to consider the ways you can use all those CCTVs to your advantage? The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from Manchester in the UK, did just that; they played in front of 80 different CCTVs around Manchester, and then asked for the video via Freedom of Information Act letters. (About 25% of the CCTV owners complied with the law and turned them over.) The result isn't too bad."
Hard-Fi already has a song called Stars of CCTV, and I saw a video from another band that used CCTV cameras inside a store.. which I actually don't think was the hard-fi song. Anyway, kudos to these guys, the video looks pretty cool :)
And every move that I make
Gets recorded to tape
So somebody up there
Can keep me safe
We're the stars of CCTV
Making movies out on the street
Flashing blue lights, camera, action
Watching my life, main attraction
We're the stars of CCTV
Can't you see the camera loves me?
which is totally what she said
Go to YouTube. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Got AdBlock? Turn it off or the video won't show up.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
I live in the UK, I guess that would be the city or county councils.
I kind of just assumed that the government/law enforcement were the "owners". Who is the summary referring to as "the CCTV owners" ?
Almost all of the CCTV cameras that are frequently cited as being part of a "surveillance state" in the UK are owned and operated by private individuals, not the government. Specifically, most are run by shops. The article refers to the band using one on a bus.
Which raises the question -- why did the band expect the freedom of information act to apply to these? It only applies to government-run organisations, so the owners of the cameras in question had no obligation to comply with the request.
Is it just me, or is the important part of this not "band makes music video" but than 75% of organisations will deny a legitimate request under the Freedom of Information Act? Surely someone should be investigating this...
My suspicion is that the band doesn't actually understand the FIA. From the article:
They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester - including on a bus - and proceeded to play to the cameras.
Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act.
[...]
Only a quarter of the organisations contacted fulfilled their obligation to hand over the footage - perhaps predictably, bigger firms were reluctant, while smaller companies were more helpful - but that still provided enough for a video with 20 locations.
The bus and "bigger firms" are referring to cameras operated by private organisations which have no legal obligation to respond to such a request. "Smaller companies" were presumably more helpful due to the fact that they didn't have lawyers to inform them of this fact.
They probably would have got further making the request under the UK Data Protection Act.
No matter what it looks like, there isn't a
Dom Joly did a similar thing in his last series, IIRC.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Mark Thomas did it about six or seven years back too.
Under the DPA; a company can only charge £10 per request, not £20.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
There's is a similar part under the Freedom of Information act, thats lets them charge a fee to process your request. It's a bit more £20 for the upper limit IIRC.
It is a provision of the DPA that an individual can request that a company discloses all of the information that it holds on that individual. This can include information stored on video tape, such as that gathered by a company's CCTV cameras.
yes, footage of you on camera is data, and you can request that a company hands over any data on you that it holds.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Under the data protection act you have the right to request a copy of any data stored on you so it's covered by that.
It could get expensive though as they're allowed to charge a processing fee which by the way I think absolutely stinks. Why should you have to pay to see if they've fucked up your data? The burden should be entirely on the data holders and if they get lots of malicious requests designed to cost them money in man hours then maybe they should reconsider the need to store data on you in the first place. At very worst the costs should be capped at something trivial like £0.50.
As I own such a business (CCTV and alarm installer) I can tell you that the pricetag of 20 quid is low if there is abuse of such service since the cost of retrieving video from some DVR systems (in terms of man-hours), especially those that are not PC based can be much, much higher than that.
and it's since transpired that most of it was fake. Taxis generally don't have CCTV in them. Yet.
The Indie Alt-Rock group "Kiosk" did something similar with the music video for "Stratospheric". It includes CCTV video of the band on the street, edited together with video surveillance of criminals in the act.
On MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/londonkiosk
On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBCMYO2PHQ
Free MP3 download: http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/kioskx25x09x03
No connection to the band. In fact I think the music sucks... Still, they simply don't have as good of a PR guy working for them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to view data an organisation holds on you for a reasonable fee (~£10 I think) including CCTV footage: Wiki Link. Comedian Mark Thomas did a whole programme on it a few years back.
This video was discussed over at Metafilter a few weeks ago, where Ericb discovered that the video was just a PR stunt.
Regardless, it was a pretty good one all the same!
Where I live (Scotland), they can charge you with "breach of the peace", which is a remarkably elastic law that allows the Police to charge you for doing just about anything. Basically they approach you and tell you to stop doing whatever you are doing, and if you disagree, then you are breaching the peace, and they arrest you.
The DPA does not apply to CCTV. CCTV information is simply in a recording in chronological order - it has no filing system based on an individual. See http://www.ico.gov.uk/Home/what_we_cover/data_protection/guidance/technical_guidance_notes.aspx If there was some way of accessing the information by name or a number that could identify an individual then it would be covered.
The ones outside the stores are their own. The one's inside places like stadiums, Malls are owned by the people who run these places.
Breach of the peace also applies in England and is equally 'elastic'. The current favourite by police at the moment (especially the PSCO wannabe cops) is the Terrorism Act 2006 which can be very easily stretched to include pretty much anything. I'm surprised that this stunt didn't get flagged up as suspicious (aka terrorist) behaviour.
Kudos to these guys for pulling this off though. How they managed to set up a drum kit on one of the Metrolink trams and on the travelator in Sainsbury's supermarket in Fallowfield (which is at a 45 degree angle!) is crazy.