Abbr. for
closed-circuit television. Basically,
camera systems used for purposes of
surveillance.
Your modern surveillance camera provides full remote-controlled
pan,
tilt and
zoom functionality and can see in pitch darkness due to
infrared capabilities.
The world today (2002) has some 25 Million CCTV cameras in place, 2.5 Million in
UK alone, most of them in densely populated urban and commercial areas. The average UK citizen is on surveillance tapes approximately 300 times a day.
Your average security guy can monitor 25 screens. So the UK alone would need about 100000 24h-workers to monitor all their cameras. You can estimate the commercial interest in putting semi-intelligent systems in place that detect (or in the case of
Cromatica even predict) "suspicious" behaviour and give silent
alarms.
1984? Long ago.