The ``Intelligence Arms Race''

While there will no doubt be more environmental intelligence than personal intelligence, there is at least the hope that there might be an end to the drastic imbalance between personal intelligence and environmental intelligence. The individual making a purchase in a department store may have several cameras pointing at him to make sure that if he removed merchandise without payment that there would be evidence that he did not pay for the item. However, in the future, he will have a means of collecting evidence that he did pay for the item, or a recorded statement of a clerk about the refund policy. More extreme examples, such as the case of Latasha Harlins² also come to mind.

In this sense, the camera-based reality-mediator becomes an equalizer much like the Colt45 in the Wild West. When there's a standoff, it doesn't matter whether one person has a big gun and the other has a small gun, so long as there is enough ammunition for mutually assured destruction.

In the WearCam case, it is simply a matter of mutually assured accountability.