My mind generates the most creative ideas when it is supposed to be working on important Client problems. Most of them are so far out, you’re not missing much if I don’t write about them. But this one intrigues me with its possibilities… and maybe some downside risks.

Imagine that you are a single parent of a teenager, and she has to work the late shift at a fast-food restaurant. She doesn’t want to bother anyone for a ride, because she only lives a mile away. She disappears somewhere between work and home. The parents’ worst nightmare happened, in just this way, on September 8, 2005 in Ottawa.

Now, imagine if the teenager has a cell-phone that can be switched to “video security mode”. It is taking snap shots every 3 seconds and sending them to a security server run by the phone company, or local police service. When a stranger approaches the teenager, she holds the phone up as it takes his picture several times. A distinctive ring lets anyone in the vicinity know that images are being sent in real-time to authorities, and reminds the user that the phone is still “on guard”. The phone’s location is known. As a last resort, holding a key down for a couple of seconds sends a 911 call to alert authorities, together with all the images collected. Why not record the audio as well and pass it along?

If you’re the bad guy, you’ve got to be pretty stupid to go through with any kind of crime in this situation.

How long will we have to wait before some cell phone manufacturer combines the built-in camera or camcorder capability of cell-phones with an intelligent “personal-security” mode?

Technology like this might have saved Jennifer Teague’s life. It’s certainly feasible to put this all together today. The only thing that may not exist at this moment is the few hundred lines of software code on the phone and on the phone company’s servers to manage the data correctly.

Of course there are a few downside issues such as abuse. What’s to stop the user from putting the phone in this mode and pointing it at someone they don’t like? Does that make them a suspect when the bank on the next block is robbed? What if the server the images are stored on is not properly secured, and gets hacked? There are a lot of issues, mostly privacy of innocent bystanders. What about someone with a restraining order on an ex-spouse they are trying to hide from, who might see the video on the 6:00 news?

But I think most of those issues are already being hotly argued in courts across the land for cell-phone cameras, and unauthorized YouTube videos. Still, I don’t think cell-phone cameras will be going away any time soon. So, why not put them to use in some organized way; and maybe save a few hundred lives a year along the way?

It’s too late for Jennifer, but hopefully not for others. Someone eventually confessed to Jennifer’s murder, after almost a year. But could he have been caught earlier, or even deterred from attacking in the first place, if he knew what evidence the Cellveillance system had on him before he even made a move?

I personally hope it does exist, or is in the works already. It’s just a couple of small pieces of software to add to a system that is already in place.

Please send your comments. Does this use of technology represent a bad precedent? I can’t think of a good enough reason not to implement it. I’d love to talk to any cell phone provider about how they could make it work.