Who is Surveilling Whom? Negotiations of surveillance and sousveillance in relation to WikiLeaks’ release of the gun camera tapeCollateral Murder

This article concerns the particular form of counter-surveillance termed “sousveillance”, which aims to turn surveillance at the institutions responsible for surveillance. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives “mediatization” and “aerial surveillance,” the article studies WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of a US military gun camera tape as an example of sousveillance. The gun camera tape had initially been used as aerial reconnaissance from an Apache helicopter during a US military operation in 2007 in Iraq. However, WikiLeaks deploys the footage as a means to surveille, or indeed sousveille, the actions of the US military on account of the tape’s documentation of how ten Iraqi civilians and two staff members from the news agency Reuters are shot from the helicopter. With the video’s representation of a specific place at a specific time as pivotal point, this case illustrates different approaches to surveillance and sousveillance by the key institutions and actors of the military, an activist organization, and the press.