![SurveillanceSousveillanceLifeGloggingMannSensecamMemoto](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/SurveillanceSousveillanceLifeGloggingMannSensecamMemoto.jpg)
Sousveillance ( ) is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small
wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by
Steve Mann, stems from the contrasting French words ''sur'', meaning "above", and ''sous'', meaning "below", i.e. "
surveillance" denotes the "
eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bring the means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings) or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures).
While surveillance and sousveillance both usually refer to visual monitoring, they can denote other forms of monitoring such as audio surveillance or sousveillance. With audio (e.g. recording of phone conversations), sousveillance is sometimes referred to as "one party consent".
Undersight (inverse oversight) is sousveillance at high-level, e.g. "citizen undersight" being reciprocal to a congressional oversight committee or the like.
Inverse surveillance is a subset of sousveillance with an emphasis on "watchful vigilance from underneath" and a form of
surveillance inquiry or legal protection involving the recording, monitoring, study, or analysis of surveillance systems, proponents of surveillance, and possibly also recordings of authority figures. Inverse surveillance is typically undertaken by those who are subjected to surveillance, so it can be thought of as a form of
ethnography or
ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction.Garfinkel, H. (1974) 'The origins of the term ethnomethodology', in R.Turner (Ed.) Ethnomethodology, Penguin, Harmondsworth, pp 15–18. I ...
(i.e. an analysis of the surveilled from the perspective of a participant in a society under surveillance).
Sousveillance typically involves community-based recording from first person perspectives, without necessarily involving any specific political agenda, whereas inverse surveillance is a form of sousveillance that is typically directed at, or used to collect data to analyze or study, surveillance or its proponents (e.g., the actions of police or protestors at a protest rally).
Sousveillance is not necessarily
countersurveillance
Countersurveillance refers to measures that are usually undertaken by the public to prevent surveillance, including covert surveillance. Countersurveillance may include electronic methods such as technical surveillance counter-measures, which is t ...
. Sousveillance can be used to "counter" surveillance or it can be used with surveillance to create a more complete "veillance" ("Surveillance is a half-truth without sousveillance"). The question of "
Who watches the watchers
"Who Watches the Watchers" is the fourth episode of the Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 3), third season of the American science fiction television series ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', the 52nd episode overall, first broadcast on O ...
" is dealt with more properly under the topic of metaveillance (the veillance of veillance) than sousveillance.
Inverse surveillance
Inverse surveillance is a type of sousveillance. The more general concept of sousveillance goes beyond just inverse surveillance and the associated twentieth-century political "us ''versus'' them" framework for citizens to photograph
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...
, shoppers to photograph shopkeepers, or passengers to photograph taxicab drivers.
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a ...
commented in his book ''
Smart Mobs
''Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' is a book by Howard Rheingold dealing with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing technology. The book covers subjects from text-messaging culture to wireless Internet
...
'' that this is similar to the pedestrian−driver concept, i.e. these are roles that many of us take both sides on, from time to time. Many aspects of sousveillance were examined in the general category of "reciprocal accountability" in David Brin's 1997 non-fiction book The Transparent Society, and also in Brin's novels. The first ''International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance'', IWIS, took place in 2004, chaired by Dr. Jim Gemmell, (
MyLifeBits
MyLifeBits is a life-logging experiment begun in 2001. It is a Microsoft Research project inspired by Vannevar Bush's hypothetical Memex computer system. The project includes full-text search, text and audio annotations, and hyperlinks. The "exper ...
),
Joi Ito
is a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is a former director of the MIT Media Lab, former professor of the practice of media arts and sciences at MIT, and a former visiting professor of practice at the Harvard Law School. Ito has ...
,
Anastasios Venetsanopoulos, and
Steve Mann, among others.
One of the things that brought inverse surveillance to light was the reactions of security guards to electric seeing aids and similar sousveillance practices. It seemed, early on, that the more
camera
A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...
s that were in an establishment, the more the guards disliked the use of an electric seeing aid, such as the
EyeTap
An EyeTap is a concept for a wearable computing device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose computer-generated imagery on the original scene availabl ...
eyeglasses. It was through simply wearing electric seeing aids, as a passive observer, that it was discovered that surveillance and sousveillance can cause conflict and sometimes confrontation. This led some researchers to explore why the perpetrators of surveillance are suspicious of sousveillance, and thus defined the notion of inverse surveillance as a new and interesting facet of studies in sousveillance.
[
Since the year 2001, December 24 has been World Sousveillance Day with groups of participants in ]New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
, Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, Japan, Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
and the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. However, this designated day focuses only on hierarchical sousveillance, whereas there are a number of groups around the world working on combining the two forms of sousveillance.
An essay from ''Wired'' magazine predicts that sousveillance is an important development that will be on the rise in 2014.
Sousveillance of a state by its citizens has been credited with addressing many problems such as election fraud or electoral misdeeds, as well as providing good governance. For example, mobile phones were used in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...
and Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
in 2007 for checking malpractices and intimidation during elections.
A recent area of research further developed at IWIS was the equilibrium between surveillance and sousveillance. Current "equiveillance
Equiveillance is a state of equilibrium, or a desire to attain a state of equilibrium, between surveillance and sousveillance. It is sometimes confused with transparency. The balance (equilibrium) provided by equiveillance allows individuals to ...
theory" holds that sousveillance, to some extent, often reduces or eliminates the need for surveillance. In this sense it is possible to replace the Panoptic God's eye view of surveillance with a more community-building ubiquitous personal experience capture. Crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
s, for example, might then be solved by way of collaboration among the citizenry rather than through the watching over the citizenry from above. But it is not so black-and-white as this dichotomy suggests. In particular, citizens watching over their neighbors is not necessarily "better" than the alternative: an increase in community self-reliance might be offset by an uncomfortable "nosy neighbor" effect. "Personal sousveillance" has been referred to as "coveillance" by Mann, Nolan and Wellman.
Copwatch
Copwatch (also Cop Watch or Cop-Watch) is a network of activist organizations, typically autonomous and focused in local areas, in the United States, Canada and Europe that observe and document police activity while looking for signs of police mi ...
is a network of American and Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
volunteer organizations that "police the police." Copwatch groups usually engage in monitoring of the police, videotaping police activity, and educating the public about police misconduct. Fitwatch is a group that photograph Forward Intelligence Teams (police photographers) in the United Kingdom.
In 2008, Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
researchers (in the MESSAGE project) teamed with bicycle couriers to measure and transmit air pollution indicators as they travel the city.
In 2012 the Danish daily newspaper and online title Dagbladet Information crowdmapped the positions of surveillance cameras by encouraging readers to use a free Android and iOS app to photograph and geolocate CCTV cameras.
Personal sousveillance
Personal sousveillance is the art, science, and technology of personal experience capture, processing, storage, retrieval, and transmission, such as lifelong audiovisual recording by way of cybernetic
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson ma ...
prosthetics
In medicine, a prosthesis (plural: prostheses; from grc, πρόσθεσις, prósthesis, addition, application, attachment), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through trau ...
, such as seeing-aids, visual memory aids, and the like. Even today's personal sousveillance technologies like camera phones and weblogs tend to build a sense of community
Sense of community (or psychological sense of community) is a concept in community psychology, social psychology, and community social work, as well as in several other research disciplines, such as urban sociology, which focuses on the ''experie ...
, in contrast to surveillance that some have said is corrosive to community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, ...
.
The legal, ethical, and policy issues surrounding personal sousveillance are largely yet to be explored, but there are close parallels to the social and legal norms surrounding recording of telephone conversations. When one or more parties to the conversation record it, it is called "sousveillance", whereas when the conversation is recorded by a person who is not a party to the conversation (such as a prison guard violating a client-lawyer relationship), the recording is called "surveillance".
"Targeted sousveillance" refers to sousveillance of a specific individual by one or more other individuals. Usually, the targeted individual is a representative or proponent of surveillance, so targeted sousveillance is often inverse surveillance or hierarchical sousveillance. "Hierarchical sousveillance" refers, for example, to citizens photographing the police, shoppers photographing shopkeepers, or taxicab passengers photographing cab drivers. So, for example, targeting former White House security official Admiral John Poindexter
John Marlan Poindexter (born August 12, 1936) is a retired United States naval officer and Department of Defense official. He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor during the Reagan administration. He was convict ...
with sousveillance follows this more political narrative.
Classy's Kitchen describes sousveillance as "another way to add further introspection to the commons that keeps society open but still makes the world smaller and safer". In this way sousveillance may be regarded as a possible replacement for surveillance. In this sur/sousveillance replacement, one can consider an operative social norm that would require cameras to be attached to a human operator. Under such a scenario, any objections to the camera could be raised by another human more easily than it would be to interact with a lamp post upon which is mounted a surveillance camera. Thus, the argument is that cameras attached to people ought to be less offensive than cameras attached to inanimate objects, because there is at least one responsible party present to operate the camera. This responsible-party argument is analogous to that used for the operation of a motor vehicle, where a responsible driver is present, in contrast to the remote or automated operation of a motor vehicle.
Beyond the political or breaching of hierarchical structure explored in academia, the more rapidly emerging discourse on sousveillance within the industry is "personal sousveillance", namely the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity.
As the technologies get smaller and easier to use, the capture, recording, and playback of everyday life get that much easier to initiate spontaneously in unexpected situations. For example, David Ollila, a manufacturer of video camera equipment, was trapped for four hours aboard a Comair plane at JFK Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport (colloquially referred to as JFK Airport, Kennedy Airport, New York-JFK, or simply JFK) is the main international airport serving New York City. The airport is the busiest of the seven airports in the New ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. When he recorded an interview with the pilot
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...
about the situation, the pilot called the police who then removed Ollila for questioning and removed everyone from the plane.
Recording a situation is only part of the sousveillance process. Communicating is also important. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
and photo-sharing sites such as Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...
play a vital role. For example, police '' agents provocateur'' were quickly revealed on YouTube when they infiltrated a demonstration in Montebello, Quebec
Montebello is a municipality located in the Papineau Regional County Municipality of Western Quebec, Canada. At the 2001 census, there were 1,039 permanent residents. The village has a total area of , and is located at the eastern edge of Quebec's ...
, against the leaders of Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
and the United States (August 2007). When the head of the Quebec police publicly stated that there was no police presence, a sousveillance video showed him to be wrong. When he revised his statement to say that the police provocateurs were peaceful observers, the same video showed them to be masked, wearing police boots, and in one case holding a rock.
There are many similar examples, such as the widely viewed YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
video of UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
campus policemen tasering a student. In Russia, as well as in some other countries where road users trust neither each other nor police, onboard camera
An onboard camera or in-car camera is a camera placed upon a moving object, such as a vehicle.
In motor racing, onboard cameras are often used to give a better perspective from the driver's point of view, whilst in films, these cameras are design ...
s are so ubiquitous that thousands of videos of automobile accidents and near-miss incidents have been uploaded. The unanticipated 2013 Russian meteor event
The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over the southern Ural region in Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC). It was caused by an approximately near-Earth asteroid that entered the a ...
was well documented from a dozen angles via the use of these devices. Similarly, in February 2015, dashcams caught valuable footage of the crash of TransAsia Airways
TransAsia Airways (TNA, until January 1992 known by its Chinese-translated name Foshing Airlines;For historical pictures with "Foshing Airlines" on it, see: ) was a Taiwanese airline based in Neihu District in Taipei. Though the company starte ...
Flight GE235.
Alibi sousveillance
Alibi sousveillance is a form of sousveillance activity aimed at generating an alibi
An alibi (from the Latin, '' alibī'', meaning "somewhere else") is a statement by a person, who is a possible perpetrator of a crime, of where they were at the time a particular offence was committed, which is somewhere other than where the crim ...
as evidence to defend against allegations of wrongdoing.
Hasan Elahi, a University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
professor, has produced a sousveillance for his entire life, after being detained at an airport because he was erroneously placed on the US terrorist watchlist. Some of his sousveillance activities include using his cell phone as a tracking device
A tracking system, also known as a locating system, is used for the observing of persons or objects on the move and supplying a timely ordered sequence of location data for further processing. It is important to be aware of human tracking, fu ...
, and publicly posting debit card and other transactions that document his actions.
One specific use of alibi sousveillance is the growing trend of police officers wearing body cameras while on patrol. Well-publicized events involving police-citizen altercations (such as the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) have increased calls for police to wear body cameras and so capture evidence of the incidents, for their benefit and the criminal justice system as a whole. By having officers use sousveillance, police forces can generate hours of video evidence to be used in cases like that of Michael Brown, and the video evidence can act as an important alibi in the judicial proceedings in regards to who is truly at fault. Regardless of the outcome of such events, contemporaneous audio-video evidence can be extremely valuable in respect of compliance- and enforcement-related events.
Police use
Use of wearable cameras by police officers combined with video streaming and recording in an archive produces a record of the interactions of the officer with civilians and criminals. Experiments with police use in Rialto, California from 2012 to 2013 resulted in a reduction of both complaints against officers and a reduction in the use of violence by officers. The public is shielded from police misconduct and the police officer from bogus complaints.
Because these body cameras are turned on for every encounter with the public, privacy issues have been brought up with specific emphasis on special victim cases such as rape or domestic violence. Police worry that with a camera right in front of the victim, they will not feel comfortable revealing all the information that they know. There have been two case studies done in the United States that have revealed that police officers who have cameras have fewer encounters with citizens than officers who do not have cameras, due to fear of being reprimanded for committing a mistake.
Sousveillance cultures
Prior to contemporary sousveillance cultures, Simone Browne (2015) used "dark sousveillance" to refer to the ways that enslaved Black Americans refashioned techniques and technologies to facilitate survival and escape. Browne (2015) notes how pranks and other performative practices and creative acts were used to resist enslavement from experiential insight.
In the era of web-based participatory media and convergence cultures, non-governmental and non-state actors, with their own virtual communities and networks that cut across national borders, use what Bakir (2010) calls the sousveillant assemblage to wield discursive power. The sousveillant assemblage comprises Haggerty & Ericson's (2000) surveillant assemblage (or loosely linked, unstable, systems of data flows of people's activities, tracked by computers, and data-mined so that we are each reconfigured as (security) risks or (commercial) opportunities, but data-fattened by the proliferation of web-based participatory media and personal sousveillance that we willingly provide online). Verde Garrido (2015) has also explored Mann's concept of sousveillance and reinterpreted Michel Foucault's notion of parrhesia
In rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as "speak ngcandidly or ... ask ngforgiveness for so speaking". This Ancient Greek word has three different forms, as related by Michel Foucault. ''Parrhesia'' is a noun, meaning "free speec ...
(i.e., confronting authority and power with the truth) to explain that in contemporary societies, which are global and digital, 'parrhesiastic sousveillance' allows to resist and contest social, economic, and political relations of power by means of technology. These acts of resistance and contestation, in turn, enable civil societies to change old meanings and offer new ones, using a newborn digital agency to create new and contemporary politics of truth.
Features of sousveillance cultures:
* Dissent, and holding power-holders to account, is easier
Undoubtedly, the urge and practice of dissent have been common, and people exploit the participatory media technologies at hand to mark and spread their dissent. However, the rise of web-based participatory media and sousveillance cultures have made it easier for many more to record and spread this dissent globally, unimpeded by traditional media's commercial distribution restrictions such as pre-defined circulation runs or paid-for airtime, or the need for expert knowledge in media production. Mann has long maintained that the 'informal nature of sousveillance, with its tendency to distribute recordings widely, will often expose inappropriate use to scrutiny, whereas the secret nature of surveillance will tend to prevent misuse from coming to light' (Mann, 2005, p. 641). Just as Foucault's Panopticon operates through potential or implied surveillance, sousveillance might also operate through the credible threat of its existence. As the ubiquity and awareness of sousveillance widen, it is this that may most empower citizens – by making officials realise that their actions may, themselves, be monitored and exposed at any time. The permanent potential for sousveillance from so many (as opposed to more formalised exposés at the hands of investigative reporters, a small media elite) raises the likelihood that power abuses will be captured on record which can then be used to hold power-abusers and manipulators to account, providing of course, that there is a functioning legal system and/or public sphere (with mechanisms in place to translate popular demands and moral outrage into real-world change).
* Emancipation, resistance and social change are unpredictable.
In the case of police body camera implementation in the US, there are multiple responses and social implications to this form of sousveillance. The case against police brutality and the Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police br ...
movement has garnered an immense and impassioned following in a very short amount of time. There are two different social movements that have arisen in response to police body cameras. One school of thought that has manifested support is that police body cameras are necessary in fighting and ending police brutality. The other is the opposing stance to this one that raises the issue of privacy that police body cameras may violate. There have not been many case studies that have taken place in implementing police body cameras. This means that police worn body cameras have not been proven as a definite method to solve the problem of police brutality. Studies have also shown that people, both policemen and civilians, act differently when they are aware that they are being surveilled on camera. This leaves a lot of room for unpredictability surrounding the consequences of the use of this form of sousveillance.
In Mann's original conception, sousveillance had an emancipatory political thrust, with hierarchical sousveillance a conscious act of resistance to surveillance. Yet, the nature of the social change generated is unpredictable and dependent on the sousveillant content, the context of its subsequent sharing, and, of course, the strength of the traditions of deliberation for democratic purposes. ISIS
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
' use of sousveillance, then, may result in social change, but not in a progressive fashion.
* Sousveillers' anonymity is crucial.
Given the lack of secrecy inherent in placing sousveillant content online, the anonymity of the sousveillers is of prime importance if hierarchical (politically or legally motivated) sousveillance is to proliferate. There is a real need for spaces online that are willing to protect users' anonymity and keep their subversive content online despite political or corporate pressure. With this sort of situation in mind, whistle-blowing websites have been set up that guarantee anonymity, such as Wiki-leaks, launched in December 2006. More such sites are needed.
* Agenda-building power comes from the searchable and recirculated, semi-permanent, eyewitness archive.
Social media provide what could be described as a semi-permanent, and easily accessible database of eyewitness accounts. Given that the web can be used and searched in the manner of a database to find examples of sousveillance; and given the recirculation of sousveillant footage in memes and in mainstream media, ever-hungry for new content in a media environment of convergence and expanding capacity, the longevity of sousveillant footage is perhaps what gives sousveillance its agenda-building power. It allows journalists, citizens, activists, insurgents, strategic communicators and researchers the opportunity to discover and partially relive both the eye-witnessed, sousveillant account, and the discourse surrounding specific moments of sousveillance, as well as reflecting on, and marshalling, their significance.
In art
Referred to as an early proponent of lifelogging and perhaps the most extreme example of self-tracking since 2003, conceptual media artist Alberto Frigo has embarked on an ambitious project, 2004–2040, to understand himself. Starting with tracking everything his right (dominant) hand has used, he's slowly added on different tracking and documentation projects. Keeping the focus on himself and his surrounding has helped him connect to himself and the world around him.
Artist, scientist, and inventor S. Mann also created a wearable interactive art piece, the HeartCam, July 2001 in order to reverse the male gaze
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heteros ...
. Others, including Nestle, have built upon this concept of reversing the "male gaze" by using a bra as a point-of-view for a camera.
Invisibility/Aposematic Suit
Invisibility/Aposematic Suit, S. Mann, 2001, is a wearable art piece that has two modes of operation: it either (1) becomes "transparent", suggestive of a chameleon's invisibility cloak (to hide from predators).["Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices...](_blank)
", by Steve Mann, Jason Nolan and Barry Wellman, in Surveillance & Society 1(3), 2003 In this mode of operation the video displays show what is behind the wearer as if we can see through the wearer from both front and back; or
(2) reflective like a mirror, thus aposematic
Aposematism is the advertising by an animal to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. This unprofitability may consist of any defences which make the prey difficult to kill and eat, such as toxicity, venom, foul taste o ...
, to deter predators (i.e., to let them know they're being watched by the many hidden wearable cameras). In this mode, the wearer becomes like a two-sided video mirror. A potential attacker, whether approaching the wearer from the front or sneaking up behind the wearer, sees themselves displayed on the aposematic suit, in a manner similar to the way that department stores often place large video displays of their surveillance camera feed at the entrance to let potential shoplifters know they are being watched.[
Other similar projects include the work of Shinseungback Kimyonghun: " heAposematic Jacket is a ]wearable computer
A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.
Wearables may be for general ...
for self-defense. The lenses on the jacket give off the warning signal, " ... I can record you"..., to prevent possible attack. When the wearer pushes a button under threat, the jacket records the scene in 360 degrees and sends the images to the Web."
In fiction
David Brin's 1989 novel ''Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
'' portrays citizens equipped with both augmented reality gear ("Tru-Vu Goggles") and cameras exercising reciprocal accountability, with each other and with authority figures, discussing effects on crime and presaging today's "cop cam" developments. Elites are allowed only temporary, cached secrecy. In Robert Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax
The Neanderthal Parallax is a trilogy of novels written by Robert J. Sawyer and published by Tor. It depicts the effects of the opening of a connection between two versions of Earth in different parallel universes: the world familiar to the rea ...
trilogy, the Homo neanderthalensis
Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...
occupying a parallel universe have what are called companion implants. These are comprehensive recording and transmission devices, mounted in the forearm of each person. Their entire life is constantly monitored and sent to their alibi archive, a repository of recordings that are only accessible by their owner, or by the proper authorities when investigating an infraction, and in the latter case only in circumstances relevant to the investigation. Recordings are maintained after death; it is not made clear what the reasoning is for this and under what circumstances and or by whom a deceased person's archive can be accessed.
The plot of the 1995 movie '' Strange Days'' is based on a future where sousveillance recordings are made and sold as entertainment. The plot of the movie revolves around the murder of a celebrity by police officers that is recorded by a person secretly wearing one of the devices. In the movie, the recordings are made by a flat array of sensors that pick up signals from the brain stem. The sensors are usually hidden under a wig, and they record everything the person wearing them sees and hears. Recordings made while the person making them dies are called "blackjack" tapes.
The plot of the 1985 John Crowley short story ''Snow
Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes.
It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...
'' revolves around a suspended camera recording the whole of a subject's life being sold as a consumer product.
The 2007 novel '' Halting State'' by Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine '' ...
and its sequel ''Rule 34
Rule 34 is an Internet meme which claims that Internet pornography exists concerning every conceivable topic. The concept is commonly depicted as fan art of normally non-erotic subjects engaging in sexual behavior. It can also include writing ...
'' depict a 2020s Scotland in which wearable computing has a level of ubiquity similar to that of 2013's cell phones. The implications of a society in which anyone might be recording anything at any time are explored at length, particularly with respect to policing.
The open source science fiction role-playing game ''Eclipse Phase
''Eclipse Phase'' is a science fiction horror role-playing game with transhumanist themes. Originally published by Catalyst Game Labs, ''Eclipse Phase'' is now published by the game's creators, Posthuman Studios, and is released under a Crea ...
'' has sousveillance as a common part of life in the setting, as a result of data storage technology and high-definition digital cameras becoming commonplace and often integrated into any and all objects.
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is the first and (as of 2022) only person to win both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for both ...
's novel, ''the Worthing Chronicle
''The Worthing Chronicle'' (1983) is a science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, part of The Worthing series. This book by itself is out of print having been published along with nine short stories in the collection ''The Worth ...
'' also investigates the effect of (apparently) omnipotent watchers, and how it can degrade human experience—the moral dilemma leading the watchers to cease. Vernor Vinge
Vernor Steffen Vinge (; born October 2, 1944) is an American science fiction author and retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singu ...
's character, Pham Nuwen presciently recognizes the stage of "ubiquitous surveillance" in the collapse-and-rebuild cycle that plagues human planetary civilization in ''a Deepness in the Sky
''A Deepness in the Sky'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, the novel is a loose prequel (set twenty thousand years earlier) to his earlier novel '' A Fire Upon the Deep'' (1992). The title is coined ...
''.
Sousveillance efficiency or efficacy
There is a need for efficacy, efficiency or effectiveness of sousveillance, which can be met by social media, such as through widespread dissemination on social media, and when used as an output modality in conjunction with sousveillance as an input modality, is called "swollag", or gallows
A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...
spelled backwards. For example, filming or streaming an abusive situation, like police abuse, doesn't always lead to justice and punishment of the abuser without some means (i.e. swollag) for sousveillance to take effect. For example, in 2014, a man named Eric Garner
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed in the New York City borough of Staten Island after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incide ...
was choked to death by a police officer in Staten Island after being arrested on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes. "Garner's death was documented by his friend Ramsey Orta, and the video was widely disseminated. Despite the video evidence, a grand jury declined to indict Garner's killer, leading to widespread outrage and protest. (In an ironic twist, the only person indicted in connection with Garner's death was Orta, who came under police scrutiny and was arrested on an "unrelated" weapons possession charge. Orta is now in prison in New York. Sousveillance is not without its costs.)"
However, it appeared that a filmed abusive behavior is more likely to be punished if the video is widely spread. This makes sousveillance more efficient and politically meaningful, insofar it shows to a significant proportion of the population the abuses of the authority. Thus, the development of video platforms, like YouTube and Snapchat, and streaming platforms like Periscope and Twitch, are key components to sousveillance's efficiency. This was shown during French demonstrations against the "Loi Travail" in 2016, during which a Periscope stream showing authority forces, called abusive by one part of the demonstrators, was watched by 93,362 people. This video was posted on Twitter. Nevertheless, it can be considered whether this creates a dangerous dependence on private platforms, often ruled by Internet giants (like Google, for YouTube) which have common interests with governments, and who adapt their content through algorithms users don't have control on.
In addition, some argue that sousveillance may aid in state surveillance, despite being conducted by the people. Examples include mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
s used to help people signal public threats, such as the Israeli app c-Now (previously known as Reporty). In January 2018, c-Now was tested in Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...
by the mayor Christian Estrosi
Christian Paul Gilbert Estrosi (born 1 July 1955) is a French sportsman and politician who has served as Mayor of Nice since 2017, previously holding the office from 2008 to 2016. A former professional motorcyclist, he served as a government m ...
, sparking virulent public debates, with security advocates reporting spyware associated with the app Furthermore, the director of c-Now is Ehud Barack, former prime minister of Israel, who is suspected to have kept close links with Israeli and American governments. For these reasons, security advocates consider the app to serve America's global surveillance program (revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013), and raise the question of whether sousveillance really serves as "inverse surveillance".
See also
* Body camera
* Eyetap
An EyeTap is a concept for a wearable computing device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose computer-generated imagery on the original scene availabl ...
* Helmet camera
A helmet camera, otherwise known as a micro video camera, is an action camera, usually a closed circuit television camera, attached to a helmet allowing someone to make a visual record from their point of view ( POV), while keeping their hands and ...
* Lifelogging
A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people liv ...
* Memoto
* Quantified self
The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap ...
* ''Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his ''Satires'' (Satire VI, lines 347–348). It is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by variant translations, such as "Who ...
''
* Surveillance capitalism
Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, though the two can reinforce each o ...
References
{{reflist, 2
Surveillance
Technology in society
Civil disobedience
Culture jamming techniques