Importance of Sousveillance
The subject matter of Michael Krona’s 2013 article, “Surveillance vs. sousveillance. Implications of social control”, has never been so poignant. In his article, he argues that with the technological advances we have achieved we did not only gain the ability to crunch bigger numbers faster. We also gained much more control over the government’s actions. Our collective ability as a public to watch what the government is doing and to force them to behave how we believe is moral is a surprisingly new ability that we have, and we should do everything we can to maintain it, if not expand it. If the government gains its power by the consent of the governed then those who are governed have the right to know what it is they are consenting to. The previous arrangements of technology have led to an intense imbalance of power that we can only now start to refute. To hold those in power accountable for infringements upon rights and freedoms of the citizens is our duty.
I would argue most, if not all, social movements of the past decade have been entirely based upon this principle. The people of Flint, Michigan would have had absolutely no outlet with which to tell their story of the intense human rights abuses that were forced upon them by their government. The local government of Flint, Michigan failed to provide its citizens with clean drinking water. These people were being poisoned with lead, and would have had no outlet to hold the government accountable had new media channels not been available. It was critical to this movement for there to broad coordinated effort to bring the people of Flint potable drinking water.
The Black Lives Matter movement uses the same sort of social channels to hold the police accountable. There is a long history of institutionalized racism throughout the United States’ justice system. This starts, often, with police targeting African Americans and has increasingly ended in excessive violence when arresting suspects. Individuals such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin’s stories would never have been heard of, especially on such a large global stage, if it were not for new media channels allowing the general public to learn the truth and start an uproar. The offending police officers, and the system that did nothing to solve the repeating pattern, would have never been brought to justice if it weren’t for individual citizens having a more even playing field on which to fight for justice.
Holding our governments accountable for their actions is imperative to maintaining justice in our global political ecosystem. It is easy to think on a global scale and forget the people actually affected by the government’s actions. The new technological innovations do not forget each individual, however and allow us to better fight for ourselves.
