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Sousveillance as a situationist critique of surveillance. This wearable wireless webcam matches the decor of just about any gambling casino or department store.
Inverse surveillance, sometimes known by the neologism "hierarchical sousveillance" ("seeing from below" hierarchically), refers to the recording or monitoring of real or apparent authority figures by others, particularly those who are generally the subject of surveillance. Steve Mann, who coined the term, describes it as "watchful vigilance from underneath".
Inverse surveillance is a type of sousveillance. The more general concept of sousveillance goes beyond just inverse surveillance and the associated 20th Century political "us versus them" framework for citizens to photograph police, shoppers to photograph shopkeepers, or passengers to photograph taxicab drivers (Rheingold notes that it's much like the pedestrian-driver concept, e.g. these are roles that many of us take both sides of, from time-to-time).
One of the things that brought inverse surveillance to light was the reactions of security guards to electric seeing aids and similar sousveillance practice. It seemed, early on, that the more cameras that were in an establishment, the more paranoid the guards were of an electric seeing aid, such as the EyeTap eyeglasses. Thus it was, through simply wearing of electric seeing aids, as a passive observer, that something strange was discovered, namely that surveillance and sousveillance get along together about as well as matter and anti-matter. This led researchers to explore why the perpetrators of surveillance are so afraid of sousveillance, and thus defined the notion of inverse surveillance as a new and interesting facet of studies in 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 prosthetics, such as seeing-aids, visual memory aids, and the like. Even today's personal sousveillance technologies like cameraphones and weblogs tend to build a sense of community, on contrast to surveillance that some have said is corrosive to community.
The legal, ethical, and policy issues surrounding personal sousveillance are largely yet-to-be-explored, but let us consider a simple parallel example, namely the recording of telephone conversationsTelephone tapping or Wire tapping Wiretapping (in US) describes the monitoring of telephone conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The Telephone tap or Wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was applied. When one or more parties to the conversation record it, we call that 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 privilege of a prisoner), we call the recording "surveillance". Audio sousveillance is allowed in most states, and by U.S. Federal law, but audio surveillance is illegal in most states.
"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 (hierarchical sousveillance).
"Hierarchical sousveillance" refers, for example, to citizens photographing police, shoppers photographing shopkeepers, or taxicab passengers photographing cab drivers. So, for example, targeting Poindexter 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, we might regard sousveillance as a possible replacement for surveillance (imagine, for example, a law that required cameras to be attached to a human operator --- it's a lot easier to raise objections or concerns to another human than it is to have a heart-to-heart conversation with a lamp post upon which is mounted a surveillance camera).
Beyond the political or breaching of hierarchical structure explored in academia, the more rapidly emerging discourse on sousveillance within industry is the "personal sousveillance", namely the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity. In this sense, the Rodney KingRodney" Glen King (born April 2, 1965 in Sacramento, California) was an African-American motorist who, while videotaped by a bystander, was struck repeatedly by Los Angeles police officers ( LAPD) during a police stop on March 3, 1991. The incident raised video was captured serendipitously by a citizen participating in a civil society. There was no political motive (i.e. the officers who were beating King were not targeted), and the material was captured more serendipitously. As the technologies get smaller and easier to use, the capture, recording, and playback of everyday life gets that much easier. In the limit, when the effort falls low enough, personal experience capture can be done without conscious thought or effort, wherein the person capturing the information becomes a " cyborgThe term cyborg a portmanteau of cybernetic organism is used to designate a creature which is a mixture of organic and mechanical parts. Generally, the aim is to add to or enhance the abilities of the organism using artificial technology. The term was pop" in the Manfred Clynes sense. A logfile made in this way, with zero effort, is known as a CyborgLogA CyborgLog (often abbreviated to 'glog) is a first-person recording of an activity, in which the person doing the recording is a participant in the activity. Examples of cyborglogs include recordings made by assistive technologies such as a visual memory. The simplicity of a wearable camera phone makes cyborglogging possible simply by walking around in ordinary day-to-day life. Other devices such as a Holter heart monitor, can add additional tracks to an audiovisual cyborglog that make the 'glog useful for personal safety and health monitoring.