sousveillance : us watching them
Well it’s a new decade and time’s arrow moves into unknown territories. Looking back on 1999-2009, one thing did strike me as particulary significant – the rise in cctv surveillance.
Sousveillance is the opposite – you use whatever method is at your hand to record them watching us (disturbing UK police abuse in action on innocent people here: “them” really don’t like being reverse-watched…). Of course recording the day and the people you meet is also a fun thing too for recording your drifts and diversions in a stream of consciousness sort of way…
If it wasn’t for the kind of citizen Sousveillance that fitwatch undertakes (at great cost), the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of a police officer* at the G20 demos on april 1 2009 would have gone pretty much unnoticied – it was very satisfying seeing each outrageously blatant police PR coverup be countered. So it’s a useful balance to our state-controlled bad-brother environment that most people now have at least a cameraphone – in 1999 quite a lot of us didn’t even have mobiles.
Naturally our elders and betters have now realised the limitations of cctv – the next frontier will be an invisible digital one. I recommend deleting all your social media accounts and never paying for anything with a debit/credit card. In the meantime this collective and these people get straight to the point.
*most officers do a difficult and immensly stressful job well, and nowadays have no autonomy anyway
