Veilance and reciprocal transparency: Surveillance versus sousveillance, AR glass, lifeglogging, and wearable computing

This paper explores the interplay between surveillance cameras (cameras affixed to large-entities such as buildings) and sousveillance cameras (cameras affixed to small entities such as individual people), laying contextual groundwork for the social implications of Augmented/Augmediated Reality, Digital Eye Glass, and the wearable camera as a vision and visual memory aid in everyday life. We now live in a society in which we have both “the few watching the many” (surveillance), AND “the many watching the few” (sousveillance). Widespread sousveillance will cause a transition from our one-sided surveillance society back to a situation akin to olden times when the sheriff could see what everyone was doing AND everyone could see what the sheriff was doing. We name this neutral form of watching “veillance” - from the French word “veiller” which means “to watch”. Veillance is a broad concept that includes both surveillance (oversight) and sousveillance (undersight), as well as dataveillance, uberveillance, etc. It follows that: (1) sousveillance (undersight) is necessary to a healthy, fair, and balanced society whenever surveillance (oversight) is already being used; and (2) sousveillance has numerous moral, ethical, socioeconomic, humanistic/humanitarian, and practical justifications that will guarantee its widespread adoption, despite opposing sociopolitical forces.