Equiveillance
Encyclopedia
Equiveillance is a state of equilibrium, or a desire to attain a state of equilibrium, between surveillance
and sousveillance
. It is sometimes confused with transparency
. This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them.
Sousveillance, in addition to transparency, can be used to preserve the contextual integrity of surveillance data. For example, a lifelong capture of personal experience could provide "best evidence" over external surveillance data, to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context.
The emphasis on ubiquitous computing
is to be contrasted with wearable computing. As personal cell phones store more information and have the capacity to share it, wearable and mobile computing will make manifest the ability for an individual, or small group of individuals, to monitor larger institutional systems with the goal of developing systems of transparency and accountability. For just as large institutions, such as governments or corporations, store information about the buying habits of the public through an integrated surveillance highway that has a ubiquitous computing infrastructure, individuals can act as consumer activists though a system of inverse surveillance that is based upon a wearable computing infrastructure that assists in maximizing personal privacy and alerting one of information being recorded about the self. Such actions could lead to an equiveillant state, as power and respect are shared.
Panoptic surveillance was described by Michel Foucault
in the context of a prison in which prisoners were isolated from each other but visible at all times by guards. Surveillance tends to isolate individuals from one another while setting forth a one-way visibility to authority figures. This isolation leads to social fragmentation.
Sousveillance has a community-based origin, such as a personal electronic diary (or weblog
), made public on the World Wide Web. Sousveillance tends to bring together individuals, by influencing a large city to function more like a small town: with the pitfalls of gossip, but also the benefits of a sense of community participation. There is a greater degree of responsibility in a sousveillance environment.
Ubiquitous computing ("ubicomp"), also known as pervasive computing ("pervcomp"), is the integration of computers with the environment. Ubiquitous computing tends to rely on cooperation of the immediate infrastructure in the environment, but also has a tendency to centralize information, and hence, centralize authority structures. It also creates segregation, and has implications for social rights such as education and healthcare. Individuals are sorted and classified within a ubiquitous computing environment, leading to a new form of segregation. Ubiquitous computing also places emphasis on copyright law and undermines creative environments due to the controlling tendencies of authority.
Wearable computing ("wearcomp") refers to portable, wearable computing technologies. Wearcomp doesn't require any special infrastructure in the environment, as the computer is self-contained and self-reliant. With sousveillant computing, it is possible for the focus of control to be more distributed rather than centralized.
A free society is one which places emphasis on respect and the balance of power: in a democratic society, respect and power are shared and well distributed, whereas in a despotic community, respect and power are not shared and are restricted to the few. Increasingly, our society is confronted with the realization of a ubiquitous computing
environment, with the infrastructure predicated upon sensor and surveillance systems to function despite efforts to stop such expansions. How we participate in sharing respect and power will converge with how our society conducts surveillance of its citizens, and how citizens conduct sousveillance. Equiveillance represents a harmonious balance that maximizes human freedom, individual rights as well as communal democracy. The field of personal cybernetics
will converge with the fields of personal imaging and glogging (CyborgLogging), as individuals store and archive information for personal use and as a form of self defense.
To have a society within which personal freedoms and justice are equally distributed, transparency is needed. Transparency increasingly will require dealing with the issues of ubiquitous computing and wearable computing, and maintaining a balance between surveillance and inverse surveillance while maximizing personal privacy.
in his treatise on Dromology and the possibility of freedom loss as an accident of our modern world and how it relates to terrorism and war. In this context, the lack of equiveillance (disequiveillance) refers to the anthropological consequences of a world filled with continuous recording devices that encourage a despotic form of government.
The evolving field of sousveillance, stems in part from recent research on the topic of surveillance and inverse-surveillance, shedding light on how media technology is changing our sense of privacy and human freedom. Privacy becomes increasingly a measure of freedom and its control central to personal autonomy.
Increasingly, remembering is influenced by both personal and public search engines, as computing is becoming increasingly dependent upon the human-computer interaction. The issue of being able to control the amount of personal information that escapes and is recorded in the many machines that make up evolving ubiquitous computing world stresses the importance of equiveillance. The impact of surveillance will be increasingly related to the impact of increasing computer storage
space and data mining processing speed.
A recent article by Margaret Papandreou entitled "Is nothing Sacred" http://stefanospantagis.net/journal/archives/2005/12/is_nothing_sacr.html also highlights the issue of disequiveillance and how the theft of personal communications with her son undermined her freedom of thought
. Mrs Papandreou's personal computer
was entered by hackers
with malicious intent, with multiple emails, and personal information downloaded and eventually published in book form. The issue of freedom of the press
, vs theft
of personal property and electronic trespassing, developed into a subsequent legal action against the journalist and member of the Greek Parliament, Liana Kanelli
. The issue of public vs. private space comes into the debate. The practice of spying as a political technique creates a flashback to how previous Greek politicians where undermined via covert eavesdropping
and a subsequent outcome from the previous decades of the Greek Civil War
. The complexity of this case becomes twofold when the person surveillanced is a concerned citizen, and not a politician. Furthermore, the issue of taking personal electronic communication out of context for political and financial gain creates the issue of disequiveillance. This can happen on a personal level, or on a larger social, or institutional level.
"The correspondence, which included e-mails, was published in late 2000 and early 2001, in the Nemesis magazine, which was run by journalist and MP Liana Kanelli. It was unclear how Kanelli laid hands on the letters, in which the US-born Papandreou advised the FM on his political career, urging him to make use of non-governmental organizations such as the Andreas Papandreou Foundation http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Document.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1427&rf=-2011937565&m=4816&rm=6427264&l=1 http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Folder.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1436&rf=-1875717396&m=-1&rm=-1&l=1 http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Document.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1407&rf=1328502799&m=4724&rm=9339033&l=1 and the Andreas Papandreou Institute for Strategic and
Development Studies (ISTAME) http://www.istame-apapandreou.gr/en/profile/history.htm http://www.istame-apapandreou.gr/en/goals/specific.htm. Nemesis claimed Papandreou had been trying to influence Greek politics." quote from article critical of Mrs Margaret Papandreou
The foundations of human freedom
also are rooted in the idea of social contract
. Biased comments from the conclusion of documents obtained without a search warrant
, and against the principles of legal procedure create an unfair forum for judging and condemnation and expose some of the problems of how electronic freedom can be misused towards a systemic persecution and misrepresentation. It also exposes how social instability can rapidly cause a society to evolve into a prison state. Order is maintained in systematic dissolvement of freedom towards a government that operates more like a prison rather than a body of persons made up of "free individuals" with an overemphasis of everyone watching everyone, with anyone becoming an informant for whatever side that may be competing for power.
Unbalanced surveillance, and disequiveillance can rapidly deevolve society towards the en-masse phenomena such as racism
, scapegoating and even mob reactions towards an individual http://www.leymann.se/English/frame.html. It is also of importance to realize that justice
is not rooted in vengeance
, but rather, the law
.
The Margaret Papandreou case highlights the issue of victimization through use of the media as a form of propaganda
. The social emphasis of a big brother society is rapidly transitioning balkan nations via the prevalence of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1886998.stm http://www.hri.org/news/greek/ana/2001/01-03-03.ana.html#16 media support of such systems with an increasingly legal disregard for individual privacy.
The issue of privacy as part of freedom is in conflict with an absolutely transparent society
where all things become recorded and available. The ability to mediate ones visibility increasingly intersects with the concept of wearable computing, as a form of sheltering the individual from a world filled with recorders and sensors. The ability of controlling ones personal information is increasingly part of how one is to maintain ones personal and free space. Hence protecting ones privacy also intersects with the concept of sousveillance
.
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
and sousveillance
Sousveillance
Sousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", i.e...
. It is sometimes confused with transparency
The Transparent Society
The Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices...
. This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them.
Sousveillance, in addition to transparency, can be used to preserve the contextual integrity of surveillance data. For example, a lifelong capture of personal experience could provide "best evidence" over external surveillance data, to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context.
Equiveillance and ubiquitous computing
Equiveillance also represents a situation where all parties of a society or economy are empowered to be able to use the tools of accountability to make beneficial decisions. Humanity has always sought to establish authority relationships: the increasing trend to record information from our environment, and of ourselves creates the need to delineate the relationships between privacy, surveillance, and sousveillance.The emphasis on ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems...
is to be contrasted with wearable computing. As personal cell phones store more information and have the capacity to share it, wearable and mobile computing will make manifest the ability for an individual, or small group of individuals, to monitor larger institutional systems with the goal of developing systems of transparency and accountability. For just as large institutions, such as governments or corporations, store information about the buying habits of the public through an integrated surveillance highway that has a ubiquitous computing infrastructure, individuals can act as consumer activists though a system of inverse surveillance that is based upon a wearable computing infrastructure that assists in maximizing personal privacy and alerting one of information being recorded about the self. Such actions could lead to an equiveillant state, as power and respect are shared.
Panoptic surveillance was described by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
in the context of a prison in which prisoners were isolated from each other but visible at all times by guards. Surveillance tends to isolate individuals from one another while setting forth a one-way visibility to authority figures. This isolation leads to social fragmentation.
Sousveillance has a community-based origin, such as a personal electronic diary (or weblog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
), made public on the World Wide Web. Sousveillance tends to bring together individuals, by influencing a large city to function more like a small town: with the pitfalls of gossip, but also the benefits of a sense of community participation. There is a greater degree of responsibility in a sousveillance environment.
Ubiquitous computing ("ubicomp"), also known as pervasive computing ("pervcomp"), is the integration of computers with the environment. Ubiquitous computing tends to rely on cooperation of the immediate infrastructure in the environment, but also has a tendency to centralize information, and hence, centralize authority structures. It also creates segregation, and has implications for social rights such as education and healthcare. Individuals are sorted and classified within a ubiquitous computing environment, leading to a new form of segregation. Ubiquitous computing also places emphasis on copyright law and undermines creative environments due to the controlling tendencies of authority.
Wearable computing ("wearcomp") refers to portable, wearable computing technologies. Wearcomp doesn't require any special infrastructure in the environment, as the computer is self-contained and self-reliant. With sousveillant computing, it is possible for the focus of control to be more distributed rather than centralized.
A free society is one which places emphasis on respect and the balance of power: in a democratic society, respect and power are shared and well distributed, whereas in a despotic community, respect and power are not shared and are restricted to the few. Increasingly, our society is confronted with the realization of a ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems...
environment, with the infrastructure predicated upon sensor and surveillance systems to function despite efforts to stop such expansions. How we participate in sharing respect and power will converge with how our society conducts surveillance of its citizens, and how citizens conduct sousveillance. Equiveillance represents a harmonious balance that maximizes human freedom, individual rights as well as communal democracy. The field of personal cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
will converge with the fields of personal imaging and glogging (CyborgLogging), as individuals store and archive information for personal use and as a form of self defense.
To have a society within which personal freedoms and justice are equally distributed, transparency is needed. Transparency increasingly will require dealing with the issues of ubiquitous computing and wearable computing, and maintaining a balance between surveillance and inverse surveillance while maximizing personal privacy.
Equiveillance table
Equiveillance establishes a social balance between surveillance and sousveillance, as outlined in a general series of comparisons that is known in the published literature as the "equiveillance table" (see for example, Proceedings of the Association of Computing Machinery Multimedia (MM) 2004, page 620-627). There are two kinds of situations that occur when this social balance does not exist: (1) inequiveillance, in which there is a one-sided nature to surveillance (this is the most common situation), and disequiveillance, which is when the balance is not provably one-sided, but, rather, is unequal but not clearly in one or the other direction.Inequiveillance (disequiveillance)
Equiveillance represents a balance of the power relationships that surveillance and sousveillance touch upon. When there is an imbalance, social consequences can range from loss of privacy, to social reactions that in the aggregate lead to unrest and political instability. The idea of disequiveillance is described by Paul VirilioPaul Virilio
Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....
in his treatise on Dromology and the possibility of freedom loss as an accident of our modern world and how it relates to terrorism and war. In this context, the lack of equiveillance (disequiveillance) refers to the anthropological consequences of a world filled with continuous recording devices that encourage a despotic form of government.
The evolving field of sousveillance, stems in part from recent research on the topic of surveillance and inverse-surveillance, shedding light on how media technology is changing our sense of privacy and human freedom. Privacy becomes increasingly a measure of freedom and its control central to personal autonomy.
Increasingly, remembering is influenced by both personal and public search engines, as computing is becoming increasingly dependent upon the human-computer interaction. The issue of being able to control the amount of personal information that escapes and is recorded in the many machines that make up evolving ubiquitous computing world stresses the importance of equiveillance. The impact of surveillance will be increasingly related to the impact of increasing computer storage
Computer storage
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers....
space and data mining processing speed.
A recent article by Margaret Papandreou entitled "Is nothing Sacred" http://stefanospantagis.net/journal/archives/2005/12/is_nothing_sacr.html also highlights the issue of disequiveillance and how the theft of personal communications with her son undermined her freedom of thought
Freedom of thought
Freedom of thought is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints....
. Mrs Papandreou's personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
was entered by hackers
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
with malicious intent, with multiple emails, and personal information downloaded and eventually published in book form. The issue of freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
, vs theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
of personal property and electronic trespassing, developed into a subsequent legal action against the journalist and member of the Greek Parliament, Liana Kanelli
Liana Kanelli
Garyfallia Kanelli , commonly known as Liana Kanelli , is a Greek journalist and Member of the Greek Parliament for the Communist Party of Greece since 2000....
. The issue of public vs. private space comes into the debate. The practice of spying as a political technique creates a flashback to how previous Greek politicians where undermined via covert eavesdropping
Eavesdropping
Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening to the private conversation of others without their consent, as defined by Black's Law Dictionary...
and a subsequent outcome from the previous decades of the Greek Civil War
Greek Civil War
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...
. The complexity of this case becomes twofold when the person surveillanced is a concerned citizen, and not a politician. Furthermore, the issue of taking personal electronic communication out of context for political and financial gain creates the issue of disequiveillance. This can happen on a personal level, or on a larger social, or institutional level.
"The correspondence, which included e-mails, was published in late 2000 and early 2001, in the Nemesis magazine, which was run by journalist and MP Liana Kanelli. It was unclear how Kanelli laid hands on the letters, in which the US-born Papandreou advised the FM on his political career, urging him to make use of non-governmental organizations such as the Andreas Papandreou Foundation http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Document.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1427&rf=-2011937565&m=4816&rm=6427264&l=1 http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Folder.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1436&rf=-1875717396&m=-1&rm=-1&l=1 http://www.agp.gr/agp/content/Document.aspx?d=7&rd=5499005&f=1407&rf=1328502799&m=4724&rm=9339033&l=1 and the Andreas Papandreou Institute for Strategic and
Development Studies (ISTAME) http://www.istame-apapandreou.gr/en/profile/history.htm http://www.istame-apapandreou.gr/en/goals/specific.htm. Nemesis claimed Papandreou had been trying to influence Greek politics." quote from article critical of Mrs Margaret Papandreou
The foundations of human freedom
Freedom (political)
Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
also are rooted in the idea of social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
. Biased comments from the conclusion of documents obtained without a search warrant
Search warrant
A search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....
, and against the principles of legal procedure create an unfair forum for judging and condemnation and expose some of the problems of how electronic freedom can be misused towards a systemic persecution and misrepresentation. It also exposes how social instability can rapidly cause a society to evolve into a prison state. Order is maintained in systematic dissolvement of freedom towards a government that operates more like a prison rather than a body of persons made up of "free individuals" with an overemphasis of everyone watching everyone, with anyone becoming an informant for whatever side that may be competing for power.
Unbalanced surveillance, and disequiveillance can rapidly deevolve society towards the en-masse phenomena such as racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, scapegoating and even mob reactions towards an individual http://www.leymann.se/English/frame.html. It is also of importance to realize that justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
is not rooted in vengeance
Revenge
Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...
, but rather, the law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
.
The Margaret Papandreou case highlights the issue of victimization through use of the media as a form of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. The social emphasis of a big brother society is rapidly transitioning balkan nations via the prevalence of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1886998.stm http://www.hri.org/news/greek/ana/2001/01-03-03.ana.html#16 media support of such systems with an increasingly legal disregard for individual privacy.
The issue of privacy as part of freedom is in conflict with an absolutely transparent society
The Transparent Society
The Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices...
where all things become recorded and available. The ability to mediate ones visibility increasingly intersects with the concept of wearable computing, as a form of sheltering the individual from a world filled with recorders and sensors. The ability of controlling ones personal information is increasingly part of how one is to maintain ones personal and free space. Hence protecting ones privacy also intersects with the concept of sousveillance
Sousveillance
Sousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", i.e...
.