If we accept that surveillance by the State and ‘sousveillance’ by the media in Western democracies tend towards a relative equilibrium, or ‘equiveillance’ supported by the function of journalism as a watchdog and that the rule of law largely protects fundamental freedoms, this paper argues that the act of ‘mutual watching’ is undesired by the State and comes at a very high cost to journalists. The combination of technological capacity, legislative change and antidemocratic sentiments of the State, in the (...) context of its willingness and ability to collect and process Big Data on an unprecedented scale, disrupt the preconditions for a strong democracy based on free media and free citizens. This paper examines the politics of investigative journalism under the conditions of dominance of the State by investigating the experiences of journalists with surveillance. Our interviews with 48 journalists show that journalists are acutely aware of surveillance and its noxious impact. Well beyond simple ‘watching’ these experiences are remarkably similar in non-Western and Western countries. Journalists are engaging increasingly with technological and other communities, as they aim to defend journalism and their lives. Their activism is operationalised in three areas: in reluctant often-fraught cooperation with hacktivists, in self-directed protection of communications and sources and in not always willingly acting as dissenters vis-a-vis the State. This paper explores the extent to which journalists consider equilibrium to be distorted, and how they are countering any slide into subdued democracy. (shrink)

Will the proliferation of devices that provide the continuous archival and retrieval of personal experiences (CARPE) improve control over, access to and the record of collective knowledge as Vannevar Bush once predicted with his futuristic memex? Or is it possible that their increasing ubiquity might pose fundamental risks to humanity, as Donald Norman contemplated in his investigation of an imaginary CARPE device he called the “Teddy”? Through an examination of the webcam experiment of Jenni Ringley and the EyeTap experiments of (...) Steve Mann, this article explores some of the social implications of CARPE. The authors’ central claim is that focussing on notions of individual consent and control in assessing the privacy implications of CARPE while reflective of the individualistic conception of privacy that predominates western thinking, is nevertheless inadequate in terms of recognizing the effect of individual uptake of these kinds of technologies on the level of privacy we are all collectively entitled to expect. The authors urge that future analysis ought to take a broader approach that considers contextual factors affecting user groups and the possible limitations on our collective ability to control the social meanings associated with the subsequent distribution and use of personal images and experiences after they are captured and archived. The authors ultimately recommend an approach that takes into account the collective impact that CARPE technologies will have on privacy and identity formation and highlight aspects of that approach. (shrink)