World Sousveillance Day

World Sousveillance Day

World Sousveillance Day (WSD) occurs on the busiest shopping day of the year, December 24. In part, it aims to raise awareness of the imbalance between surveillance and sousveillance as particularly exemplified in shopping malls where surveillance is ubiquitous whereas sousveillance is prohibited.

WSD began in Toronto, Canada in 1998, but has spread to the rest of Canada, as well as other countries, with large groups in Vancouver, New York, Boston, and throughout California, as well as Florida. Additionally there are WSD groups in Scotland, as well as throughout Japan.

Part of WSD's mission takes the form of action research, a form of ethnomethodological inquiry. Some WSD groups, especially the New York group, in which Dr. Stefanos Pantagis, a New York physician and geriatrician was an early leader, raise awareness of the use of sousveillance as a form of memory aid.

Past WSD activities have included:

• WebRamps, a research project to assist wheelchair users and people confined to hospital beds in shopping through remote able-boded surrogates.
• Operation Python, an effort to eliminate or deter credit card skimming and similar fraud, by encouraging customers to document all credit card purchases.