In this version of surveillance —a transparent coveillance where everyone sees each other — a sense of entitlement can emerge: Every person has a human right to access, and benefit from, the data about themselves.

The use of technology to support a wide array of social, economic and political interactions is generating an increasing amount of information about who, what and where we are. Through self documentation (sousveillance), state sponsored surveillance, and documentation of interaction with others (coveillance) a vast store of information — varied in content and form — about daily life is spread across private and public data systems where it is subject to various forms of processing.

In conditions of interactions among ordinary citizens being photographed or otherwise having their image recorded by other apparently ordinary citizens, those being photographed generally will not object when they can see both the image and the image capture device…in the context of a performance space. This condition, where peers can see both the recording and the presentation of the images, is neither "surveillance" nor "sousveillance." We term such observation that is side-to-side "coveillance," an example of which could include one citizen watching another.