---
title: "Equiveillance"
chunk: 1/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equiveillance"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:01.481298+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

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.  The balance (equilibrium) provided by equiveillance allows individuals to construct their own cases from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them.
The Dutch perspective on equiveillance puts it in a sociopolitical context in regards to a balance between individuals and the state.
Equiveillance uses sousveillance, in addition to transparency, to preserve the contextual integrity of surveillance data. For example, lifelong capture of personal experiences provides alternative viewpoints in addition to external surveillance data, to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out-of-context.

== Ubiquitous computing ==
Equiveillance 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. The increasing trend to record information from our environment, and of ourselves creates the need to delineate the relationships between privacy, surveillance, and sousveillance.
Equiveillance addresses the balance between ubiquitous computing (computing installed throughout our environment) and wearable computing (computing installed upon our own bodies). As personal cell phones store more information and have the capacity to share it, wearable and mobile computing makes manifest the ability for an individual, or small group of individuals, to monitor larger institutional systems with a goal of developing systems of transparency and accountability.
In the same way that large institutions, such as governments or corporations, store information about the buying habits of the public through integrated surveillance practice and 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 lead to an equiveillant state, as power and respect are shared in a more balanced way.
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 isolates individuals from one another by setting forth a one-way visibility to authority figures, leading 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 brings together individuals, by influencing a large city to function with the social connectivity of a small town, with the pitfalls of gossip, but also the benefits of a sense of community participation, where the sousveillance environment generates a greater sense of responsibility.
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.

== 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".  There are two kinds of situations that occur when this social balance does not exist: 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.