The Mall
March 25, 2008 - March 26, 2008
At 10 am on March 25, Chris Clarke led us to the back alley behind the Arndale Center. A series of buzzers, auto-lock doors and sign-ins later, and we were in the control room of the Arndale Mall.
I was the only one amongst us who was not local, who had never been into the mall; this the love-hate symbol of Manchester; once called the eye-sore of the city, now a historic monument with a troubled past.
The Control Room (built anew during the Arndales post-bombing re-generation) was vastly different from the analog control room at the MMU. "206 cameras and more being added", reported Colin. I assumed this included in-store surveillance as well since the Arndale has about 70 shops. But no, the 206 dome covered P-T-Z cameras policed the 'streets' of the indoor Mall, shop surveillance was handled by 'Store-Net', a company that handled security for 'chain stores'.
We spent most of the morning with the staff, Paul led us to the back-room, the DataBank, Colin dismissed the big deal made about privacy, "Take my DNA, if you like, If I've got nothing to fear, as so I have nothing to hide". Their supervisor Gayle, gave the Livewire youth a virtual walk down the history of the mall, "This used to be the bus-stop and the subway, now its the winter gardens and poor old Halle square used to be the posh area, now you can see how dark and dingy it is..."
The Mall
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Jon, George(seen filming here) and Shaina in the control room at the Arndale Mall. 206 cameras.
Keyboard and joystick for camera selection and Pan-Tilt-Zoom
Gayle at her monitoring station. The 22 plasma screens display the feed from 206 cameras.
Colin: Its people who have something to hide that have a problem with CCTV.
The Security Industry Authority license is a requisite for a CCTV security operator. It is a four day course and costs 265 pounds.
BBC plays on the top-center screen.
War games with paint.
The server blades for each monitoring station.
The Queen of England greets Sarkozy...
Who's watching the watchers? Inside a cupboard in the backroom is a monitor and hard drive that records 8 channels of audio and static video of the control room.
Max, one of the LiveWire members in the data bank.
Paul at his desk.
Gayle: The public are our worst enemy.
The conduit that connects 2 buildings...its dirty and leaky and always causes trouble!
