Steve Mann, the “father of wearable computing,” and a recent keynote at the IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium, argues wearables don’t wholly create privacy concerns but instead instill balance between surveillance and the individual, The Globe and Mail reports. These wearables, he says, are different than Internet-of-Things (IoT) surveillance devices as they are used for “sousveillance”—by individuals to collect data about themselves, for themselves. “Some people say surveillance is good; other people say surveillance is bad; I say you’re both wrong,” Mann said. “Surveillance is only a half-truth. Without sousveillance, it’s out of balance.” George Mason University’s Adam Thierer, however, describes the IoT as “giant data vacuum cleaner … Basically these technologies, and especially wearables, will be collecting all of our daily footprints.”
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