The Rise of Sousveilance

Our camera phones and digital cameras make it an easy task to capture daily occurrences. This is very useful when it comes to the idea of sousveilance. Sousveilance is the idea that regular citizens can keep an eye on authorities, which in result will keep authorities in line and will prevent them from abusing their power.

The first major event of sousveilance was the Rodney King case, where police brutally beat King and were secretly recorded and then broadcasted for the world to see. This projected a message that, "living in the eye of the camera meant a person, people, institutions, and organizations were no longer insular and immune. Everyone now had to watch their back, literally, as people could learn how to play at being their own witnesses".

Since regular people have access to technology it allow us the ability to record events and by average humans having this power it keeps authorities in better behavior. Would the police who beat Rodney King have done so if they knew their violent actions were being recorded? Or would "dog shit girl", the girl who did not clean up her dogs waste, been tortured with such an awful reputation if digital exposure was not popular in society?

Even though we have a camera on us at all time and authorities know sousveilance is occurring , the issue of power abuse has still not gone away. On youtube you can find hundreds of videos of cops brutally beating innocent people. Evidently the thought of sousveilance does not work as effectively as the term surveillance.

Average citizens self regulate because the know surveillance is something that is evident in society. People will act in a respectable fashion and will refrain from doing certain things because they know they are under watch.

I personally feel that our digital culture and the practice of sousveilance does some good and will allow some authorities to regulate themselves, however its effects are not as strong as surveillance. Authorities know they have more power and I feel that they could talk their way out of more situations than a regular human, which gives them more space to break laws and act out of line.

Both ideas do operate and do promote good, but sousveilance does not have the ability to be as effective as surveillance because of the power that is already in possession.