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Concept
Sousveillance
Summary
Sousveillance (suːˈveɪləns ) 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 bringing 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 (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).
Official source
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