Lifelogging: You're Wearing a Camera?

T he number of surveillance cameras a person encounters on a daily basis is massive. Most of these cameras are owned by businesses and institutions. People generally know about the cameras, but most don’t consciously think about them or change their behavior because of them. It seems that our society is now used to ubiquitous surveillance cameras—and we assume that nobody ever really reviews the recorded material. However, as surveillance cameras become affordable, more individuals are setting up their own cameras in personal environments—in homes, on car windshields, or even on their clothing. The reasons for using such cameras are manifold: to have evidence in case of an unforeseen event (such as a break-in, an accident or assault, or officer misconduct), to monitor safety-critical situations (involving the elderly, infants, or pets), to provide healthcare assistance (in the form of personal memory aids or introspection), or simply to record memorable events (such as a holiday trip or a birthday). Yet use of such cameras by individuals rather than disembodied institutions often radically alters the perceptions of those being recorded. Steve Mann, one of the pioneers of wearable camera technology, coined the term “sousveillance” for individual-controlled recordings,1 positioning wearable cameras as a distinct grassroots pushback to institutional surveillance, with the potential to alter the prevalent power structure of surveillance. Yet recent developments in pervasive computing research have re-positioned such cameras from an activist device to a consumer product. In particular, the SenseCam Project has shown how wearable cameras can be realized and how they can aid human memory.2 Today, numerous devices are commercially available that enable ubiquitous image-based lifelogging. These