Sousveillance and Privacy Culture | Pratt Institute School of Design

Surveillance, translated from French, “watching over” refers to monitoring citizens by higher authorities, such as governments, corporations, and members of the police force. Sousveillance is defined as “watching from below.” It denotes citizens watching each other, even higher authorities. Tools of sousveillance can be wearable or portable for anyone. The typical items are smartphones, laptops, tablets, digital cameras, and action cameras. They develop in various sizes and shapes as their main purpose is to record human activities. I argue that sousveillance is another surveillance but inverse. It led Individuals to retain personal security, advocate freedom of expression, but disintegrate others' privacy.

Apple is one of the corporations that value privacy. As Apple says, privacy is a fundamental human right. In the sousveillance society, Apple’s privacy filter will motivate people to protect each others’ privacy.

Apple will provide five different filters which are crystalize, vanish, emojis, blur, and solid.

Apple’s users can always turn on and off the privacy filter when needed. When the privacy filter is on, people who aren’t recognized in the system will be automatically crystalized naturally and won’t make users’ photos awkward.

The facial recognition system will only recognize the users and people that users added to their “people menu.”