QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It is an age-old question, stretching back as far as the first century. It has evolved throughout time to mean many different things. When Juvenal first used it in his satires, it was used to refer to the impossibility of enforcing morals onto women when the enforcers themselves were already corrupt and immoral.

This is a common problem, the immoral letting the immoral prosper, often under the guise of something pure.

As the years passed it became a politically charged question, asking who watches those with immense power to keep them in check? A matter of philosophy. And it’s an important question exactly for this reason.

Who watches the Watchmen?

In the modern age surveillance is everywhere. On any given street on any given day, you can be picked up by dozens of cameras. Nothing is private anymore, Nothing is secret. The word surveillance comes from the French for “watching over”. The Watchmen are certainly watching over us like hawks, trying to figure out our next steps.

But out of surveillance came the need for sousveillance. The act of watching from under, or below. Sousveillance is the act of watching an activity from within it. Sousveillance is watching the upper echelons, because they need to be watched. This evolution of sousveillance to become a way to ensure those policing us, and the power they held, would not be used improperly was a natural one. Those in power can’t be trusted. That is why so many more stories about abusive officials are reported on. The attacks don’t increase, just the awareness. Those under sousveillance are the real bad guys. Sousveillance made it possible for those in the right to hold those in power, who only pretend to be in the right, accountable.

Trebol, you and your gang of Watchmen have been policing the Revenants for a long time now, telling the world that we’re evil, that everything we stand for is wrong, that your way is the right way. You’ve been watching us, surveilling us, but only telling half of the story. Now it’s time to add in the other half. For all you have surveilled, we have sousveilled. I see that your attempt to discredit us is completely selfish. You want recognition. You want to be the one who stopped us. But you also want to survive.

This isn’t about one individual surviving. This is about what is best for the whole world. So, your intentions, although they seem pure, are driven by selfishness and greed. That’s why you need watching too. The world may not thank us now, but we carry out our actions for the good of all.

Sousveillance is watching from below. Well I am watching you Trebol, from all the way down below, in the Underworld. I see you for what you are Trebol, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone else will see it too. You are the real bad guy.

The end of the world as you know it is coming. Tick. Tock. Time is nearly up.