LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website

Relatively new and still evolving, LittleSis has already garnered some publicity in the last couple of months.  The website is http://littlesis.org/.  It describes itself as "an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited and maintained by people like you."

The creators go on to explain: "It's easier than ever to spot the symptoms of corruption and cronyism in our political process.  Ordinary Americans have never felt more shut out from all levels of government, ... more powerless to remedy the problems facing their communities and the world. Meanwhile, the powerful networks of individuals ... continue to elude responsibility in the public spotlight. ... to effectively push back, we have to study and document the social networks that have our democracy in a stranglehold. ... LittleSis is an invitation for fed up citizens to do just that. "

It is a form of what is being called Souveillance or "watching from below" as opposed to surveillance in which the government (above) watches you.  As with both old and new ideas, there seems to be a Wikipedia entry on this too -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance, which includes a number of references, especially to the more common phenomenon of reverse video surveillance.

Perhaps more than other recent web trends, the question is whether this represents an undermining of the state or, counterintuitively, a strengthening of it through increased citizen participation.

Norm