Sousveillance ( soo-VAY-lənss) is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by Steve Mann, stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning "above", and sous, meaning "below", i.e. "surveillance" denotes the "eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bringing the means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings) or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures).
While surveillance and sousveillance both usually refer to visual monitoring, they can denote other forms of monitoring such as audio surveillance or sousveillance. With audio (e.g. recording of phone conversations), sousveillance is sometimes referred to as "one party consent".
Undersight (inverse oversight) is sousveillance at high-level, e.g. "citizen undersight" being reciprocal to a congressional oversight committee...