Civil society surveillance is not yet widespread. However, there is more and more tracking of health care and educational activities. Professional associations may also be surveilling their members. Civil society groups may organize to perform collective citizen surveillance of corporations or governments (Figure 10.1).

Relationship to Other Domains

Individuals, while being surveilled by civil society institutions, don't necessarily know they are being surveilled and think they are just being in the me and my identity domain minding their own business. Data collected in civil society surveillance could be sold to data brokers, are vulnerable to theft, and could appear on the illicit market.

Detailed Description and Relevant Literature

Civil society surveillance is primarily voluntary and known. Patients accept wearable health-monitoring devices that collect data to be retrieved by health care providers, or the patients send the data directly to these providers. Some providers are also installing medical sensors in homes.

Some school systems have issued identification cards enabled with radio frequency identification (RFID) near-field communication (NFC) to students, which can be scanned at checkpoints or seen by sensors that can then share with administrators where students are located in a school.

There is very limited academic research about this surveillance. In one of the articles I read on the topic, I found one book that focused in this area, Under Observation: The Interplay between eHealth and Surveillance. Most of the studies within it examine patients’ acceptance of these types of technologies and their relative invasiveness.

The physical institutions of schools, hospitals, and other civil society organizations have within them a range of surveillance tools for security such as CCTV cameras. These, however, are not likely logging an individual's activity into databases with PII attached.

Can Civil Society Conduct Sousveillance?

There term “sousveillance” was coined by Steve Mann. “Sur” is a prefix that means “above,” so “surveillance” means “watching from above.” The prefix “sous” means “below.”