
Sousveillance - octosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
======
moolcool
This reminds me of the old YouTube art project "Surveillance Camera Man".
Since taken off YouTube, but you can still find mirrors.
[https://archive.org/details/SurveillanceCameraMan18](https://archive.org/details/SurveillanceCameraMan18)

~~~
anonymfus
And me this reminds how I filmed anti corruption protest in Russia in 2017 and
was detained by a police for nothing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQmuNI4CEGk&t=8435](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQmuNI4CEGk&t=8435)
(since 2:20:35).

Video ends when police officer asks me to stop filming because of a rule about
not filming in meat wagons that he just invented, and I agree. Later outside
of the meat wagon he told me to delete a video. I asked him if I understood
correctly that my recording was illegal action and he wanted me to destroy an
evidence of that illegal action. Immediately four other policemen lifted me up
and carried in their hands to the police station, put me in separate room,
confiscated my phone and documents, and then he punched me in the kidneys.

That room apparently was the only one in a police station without surveillance
cameras.

I spend the rest of the day in a special unventilated cage covered with lists
of acrylic glass together with a guy who later was carried away by an
ambulance because there was not enough air for two people in the cage.

Police hard reset my phone but probably because they were idiots and I use
Windows Phone a microSD card with all my video was left intact.

I was fined by 1000₽ by Russian court which watched the video I recorded and
found not enough evidence of me being innocent on the base of the reports
written by completely different police officers instead of these I filmed
detaining me. The court refused to call witnesses. The same happened during
appellation.

------
cookingrobot
The researcher who coined the phrase, Steve Mann, has been working on wearable
computing since the 80s. In any picture I’ve seen of him over the years he’s
had some kind of camera on his face. He also invented the hdr image merging
algorithm.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann)

~~~
canada_dry
Steve is a local geek hero in Toronto. He's been at this game for a long time!

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ahartmetz
This may make sense in specific situations, but my favorite thing about it is
the wordplay and what it points out about surveillance - surveillance is the
more powerful watching the less powerful.

~~~
gugagore
I don't think "sur-" necessarily means "more power". Here's a bunch of sur-
prefixed words in French:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_words_prefixe...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_words_prefixed_with_sur-)

My favorite so far on that list "surbooker"\--"to overbook"

~~~
joshklein
The etymology of surveillance is closer to “watch over”, as if from above. The
literal “sur” prefix could be “over” or “on” or “upon” when translated to
English, so it implies an above-ness.

The “sous” prefix is the logical opposite, usually translating to “below” or
“under” or “beneath”, though it can be used to mean “within”.

~~~
samstave
Yeah, it means within or even permeating or imbued in this context.

------
callesgg
I have been looking for a lifeloging camera for a while. But i can't find
anything that is discrete enogh. The n"arative clip" looked discrete. But it
is of the market.

Just want something that takes picture every 20 min's or so. So that i can
review/analyze some of my daily behaviors in hindsight.

~~~
sneak
Have you perhaps considered that recording people unobtrusively without their
consent may be unethical or, at the minimum, rude?

~~~
throwaway675309
It kind of ticks me off that people lose their collective "sh##" when things
like Google Glass and Narrative help to give power to the civilian to record
things in an unobtrusive manner but that people are totally _fine_ with the
ubiquitous billions of eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras (see London) that
the government uses to watch us every second.

~~~
jacobolus
> _ticks me off that people lose their collective shit when things like Google
> Glass [record ubiquitously but] people are totally fine with the ubiquitous
> billions of eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras_

The overlap between the “people” who don’t like Google to record their lives
and the “people” who don’t care if the police do it is quite small...

But in any case the police in a democracy are at least nominally accountable
to the populace, and can be checked via elections and other mechanisms. The
mission of police is ostensibly for public benefit and includes criminal
investigation, which surveillance could arguably help with. Google is a
multinational corporation accountable primarily to itself which wants the data
to help with its advertising business.

~~~
throwaway675309
I appreciate the response, and I'm not trying to be sarcastic but the
operative word here is "nominally". While it's nice in theory to view law
enforcement and the government as some kind of trustworthy body whose purpose
is to serve and protect, in reality that kind of power is often abused.

Look how long it took for bodycams on police to be used and even then, they
get conveniently broken, battery dies, or just blatently turned off.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? and all that.

------
tristor
Does anyone remember Hasan Elahi, profiled in Wired back in 2007?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130913190505/http://www.wired....](https://web.archive.org/web/20130913190505/http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-06/ps_transparency)

I wonder what every happened to his Sousveillance project? His map still
updates, but I haven't seen any of his other post feeds updated in awhile.

Was what I immediately thought of and it was conveniently also referenced in
the linked Wikipedia article.

------
tw1010
What other strategies, like this one, have been invented which feels like a
more _offensive_ counterforce against the slow surveillance tide, in contrast
to the more common _defensive_ strategies that just tries to keep one step
ahead of the arms race (e.g. better encryption)?

~~~
agumonkey
There's a french guy, part of an activist group that likes to invent passive
trolling strategies to fight bad groups (lobbies, governments). For instance
they robbed some stupid furnitures from a bank that just avoided some fraud
scandal so they start to sue the group. A big company starting a lawsuit to
get some chair was super negative to their image. I'll try to find his name
again.

~~~
maeln
It's the association Attac : [https://france.attac.org/agenda/article/proces-
d-une-militan...](https://france.attac.org/agenda/article/proces-d-une-
militante-d-attac-suite-a-une-action-de-fauchage-de-chaises)

They often do this kind of operations. See there recent operation about Apple
not paying taxes : [https://www.macg.co/aapl/2018/11/attac-redecore-lapple-
store...](https://www.macg.co/aapl/2018/11/attac-redecore-lapple-store-des-
champs-elysees-maj-104261)

Attac means: Association pour la taxation des transactions financières et pour
l'action citoyenne (Association for the taxation of financial transaction and
for citizen/civil action)

~~~
agumonkey
I didn't know the name of the association, the guy name is jon palais (part of
attac it seems yeah)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jon+palais+&atb=v119-3__&iar=video...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jon+palais+&atb=v119-3__&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos)

His thinkerview video is worth watching (for french speakers)

------
stcredzero
Overly centralized control of military power, economic power, and media
distribution power are often bad and lead to corruption, while the
distribution of the above generally lead to widespread benefit to civilization
and society.

The biggest bang for the buck for benefit to the common man would be through
the inversion of "Trusted Execution" or DRM technologies to enforce privacy
policies on corporations and large organizations on behalf of the public. It
will never happen, because the general public, and especially the tech portion
of it, are emotionally conditioned against such technology. However, there are
many mechanisms like this, which show this kind of asymmetry with regards to
centralized power.

Some corporations have already taken a step in this direction, by giving up
access to encryption keys and the ability to read their user's data. It would
just be one step further for a corporation to cede control of privacy policy
implementation on behalf of its customers by running code implementing those
policies on trusted execution engines. This way, users will be able to revoke
access to their data from corporations and large organizations.

The public will never go for this, however, because they're already
conditioned against such technologies from its application by large
organizations against the interests of individuals.

~~~
jacobolus
Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit? My
impression is that e.g. widespread distribution of small arms to local gangs,
paramilitary mercenaries, etc. generally just leads to a lot of small scale
conflict and death. Look at any of the most violent parts of the world, and
they are generally awash with distributed military power.

Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, especially if media
consumers have poor media literacy. Social media (and the internet more
generally) in the past few years gave pretty well any publisher the same
direct-to-consumer distribution channel, and the result was many readers
believing in nonsensical conspiracy theories because they couldn’t distinguish
them from reputable news.

~~~
stcredzero
_Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit?_

Concentration in the wrong hands is the problem.

 _distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries_

The local gangs and paramilitaries in those situations represent local
concentrations of power, not disbursement. Local warlords rule because they
are armed in particular. If they didn't have an advantage over the general
populace, they wouldn't be ruling it.

 _Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, especially if media
consumers have poor media literacy._

There were periods of time in the US when there were tons of hyper partisan
local newspapers. History itself is a mixed bag. However, things often work
out, if you give power to the public.

~~~
jacobolus
> _Local warlords rule because they are armed in particular. If they didn 't
> have an advantage over the general populace, they wouldn't be ruling it._

This claim does not seem well supported by evidence.

We can look at otherwise largely comparable places where either small arms are
largely limited to police/military or where small arms are broadly
distributed, and violence is generally much higher in the latter.

Giving everybody in an economically precarious place a gun increases violence,
strengthens the influence and size of local gangs, amplifies ethnic tensions,
etc.

Much of the violence in developing countries is worsened by US and European
arms producers/merchants distributing weapons. In the past it was deliberate
US policy to distribute weapons broadly in particular countries with the goal
of destabilizing them via widespread violence.

There is plenty of evidence that all else equal, gun control leads to reduced
violence. See e.g.
[https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/38/1/140/2754868](https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/38/1/140/2754868)

Unfortunately in the USA a powerful arms industry resists efforts to
systematically study the effects of gun policy, much less implement effective
gun control, using comparable techniques to the tobacco industry of a few
decades ago. The result is uniquely and shockingly high levels of gun violence
compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

* * *

> _There were periods of time in the US when there were tons of hyper partisan
> local newspapers_

Yes and the propaganda was highly effective politically, leading to terrible
policy outcomes.

~~~
stcredzero
_Yes and the propaganda was highly effective politically, leading to terrible
policy outcomes._

The same can be true for highly centralized news media. That's one of the
points made in _Manufacturing Consent_.

------
newnewpdro
It surprised me to not find a single instance of "smartphone" or "smart phone"
in that entire article.

Arguably every smartphone in the world participates unwittingly in a global
sousveillance network, they don't even have lens covers or camera-active
lights, while running heaps of privileged software beyond control of the
owners.

Every time I find myself in a cafe, restaurant, or other populated public
space it can be rather disturbing to count the number of networked cameras and
microphones within my line of sight at any given moment thanks to this
development.

------
sbhn
Sousveillance is illegal on London’s TFL network. They show adverts on the
screens asking you to report anybody doing it.

~~~
brainwad
Of course, only those blessed with good vision and memory should be able to
have a visual record of their life :/ I can't wait for a chip that records
everything I ever see so that I don't have to rely on flaky human memory.

~~~
timoth
Could be a double-edged sword. Have you seen Black Mirror -- first series,
episode 3?

~~~
toss1
Also, 'The Final Cut', by Omar Naim, w/ Robin Williams, highlights some
interesting issues with implants recording everything:

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/)

------
ErikAugust
I've began experimenting with "sousveillance" \- using two commodity pieces of
hardware:

\- A GoPro Hero5 Session - which is a ~2 inch cube that shoots 4K: which I use
for running, bicycling for transportation, and as a dash cam. The
stabilization features works decently. ~$150.

\- An iON SnapCam - [https://www.amazon.com/iON-Camera-SnapCam-Wearable-
Bluetooth...](https://www.amazon.com/iON-Camera-SnapCam-Wearable-
Bluetooth/dp/B012X08L0A)

If you can find a good way of attaching this to yourself, it's not too bad.
Fairly* low profile - about 2 inches by half inch. It can be purchased for
~$25.

Some things I am working to overcome is really on the "cloud" and "streaming"
sides, as I feel it defeats the purpose to stream or upload to policed
platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, etc.

~~~
eth0up
I've found the Mobius B action cam useful and affordable for general
sousveillance. It's a primitive interface, but can be configured via a text
file across any platform. I presently have mine configured as a motion cam,
which is sensitive enough to effectively use as a standard camera too. Vids
and pics can be viewed through mini usb on a phone or pc. The B has a wide
angle lens and the text file has an option for narrow view. I often use it as
a rear facing dashcam when someone gets too aggressive, eg tailgating, etc.
For home I use a webcam and the Motion program, which works quite well for me.
Lots of options in the Motion config file.

------
throwaway675309
I would love for somebody to combine Narrative's 8+ hour time-lapse
lifelogging photos with the ability to be linked to your phone which would
continuously upload the photos to a selected FTP server. That way if the
device is confiscated or destroyed by law enforcement, you'd still have a
record.

------
crtasm
I went to a conference on this topic in Denmark some years ago

[http://digitalurbanliving.projects.cavi.au.dk/www.digitalurb...](http://digitalurbanliving.projects.cavi.au.dk/www.digitalurbanliving.dk/sousveillance/index-2.html)

------
david_at
[https://www.grassland.network/](https://www.grassland.network/)

------
fearai
Isn't this just a fancy name for "reverse" surveillance?

~~~
Jtsummers
No. Sousveillance is possible without intent to observe the surveillance
mechanisms in place. Go to a festival, these days, with the plethora of
cameras (on phones or standalone, video or still) and people are participating
in sousveillance (though likely not deliberately or recognizing it as such).
They aren't watching the police or other observers. They're just particpating
and recording the event itself.

~~~
fearai
cool. seems very ambiguous and watered down.

without intent seems like it should just be called "watching" or "recording".
also does it stop being called "Sousveillance" if done on a plane? or hiking
above a certain altitude?

we are very interested in pulling data from "accidental" surveillance.

~~~
type0
> it should just be called "watching" or "recording". also does it stop being
> called "Sousveillance" if done on a plane? or hiking above a certain
> altitude?

or if it's done with a drone it's almost terrorism as many politicians would
like you to believe. The concept of sousveilance can never be implemented in
any meaningful democratic way on a day to day life because individuals are
always subordinate to the state.

------
jasonbarrah
I was almost certain that this article was about my WIFI enabled Sous Vide
cooker being hacked.

Stay away from my cooking times and trade secrets China! These ribs are fall
off the bone tender!

~~~
misterbwong
Any way you could share your domestic US trade secret recipe? I promise I
won't leak it to China.

------
angel_j
Dr. Seussveillance

