Sousveillance: Inventing and using wearable computing devices for data collection in surveillance environments

This paper explores using wearable computing devices to perform \sousveillance " (inverse surveillance) as a counter to organizational surveil-lance. A series of performances are used to question social norms of surveillance. A variety of wearable computing inventions generated dif-ferent kinds of responses. Visible sousveillance often evoked counter-performances by front-line surveillance workers. The juxtaposition of sousveillance with surveillance generates participatory awareness of the ubiquitous presence and acceptance of surveillance in society. 1 Neighborhood \Eyes on the Street " or Orga-nizational Surveillance? VIDEO SURVEILLANCE and its regime of control... the banaliza-tion or popularization of global surveillance, or to put it another way, the DEMOCRATIZATION OF VOYEURISM on a planetary scale, has overexposed even our most private activities. So doing, it has exposed us to a major iconic risk. In the best case, only mar-keting specialists can gauge the amplitude of this risk; in the worst, the military, investigators charged with tracking unlawful activities, political police, and automated systems for information collection. (Virilio 2002, 109)...felt meaningless unless they were being observed and this was the reason they all observed and took snapshots and movies of eac