What I'm Reading

What I'm Reading

We are all surveilled now. Today, I used my Blackberry, my Smartphone, my 'Wave and Pay' card, my work desktop computer, my home notebook computer and my library smart card. I passed surveillance cameras multiple times, even getting noticed alongside the cows on the Moor. Do the cows know that they are watched 24 /7 ??

How can we counter this invasion of privacy? The NSA, GCHQ are all watching us closely - but do we care? What is the antidote? The first step is to be aware and understand it. Wikipedia is a good start - and so is this book.

Sousveillance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sousveillance (/suːˈveɪləns/ soo-VAY-ləns; French pronunciation: ​) is most commonly defined as the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.

Alternate definitions of both sur and sous veillance, in addition to definition above include:

(2) Surveillance is defined as cameras (or other sensors) affixed to property (real-estate, e.g. land, by way of posts or poles, or buildings), whereas sousveillance is defined as cameras (or other sensors) borne by people.

(3) Surveillance is the veillance of the authority (i.e. the veillance that has the capacity to prohibit other veillances), whereas sousveillance is the veillance of plurality (i.e. "crowd veillance" or watching, sensing, or the like, done by non authorities).

Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance",based on the word surveillance (from the French sur, "from above", and veiller, "to watch"), and substituting the prefix sous, "from below".

While surveillance and sousveillance both generally refer to visual monitoring, the terms also denote other forms of monitoring such as audio surveillance or sousveillance. In the audio sense (e.g. recording of phone conversations) sousveillance is referred to as "one party consent".