Who buys and controls the CCTV? Back to contents 26 On CCTVs Significant global adoption of CCTV cameras has followed since they came into existence in 1942. The technology has transitioned from being used in military contexts to being adopted in various aspects of daily life, most prominently to facilitate policing activities. In 2004, academic experts41 explained its expansion in public spaces through four stages: The first stage is the adoption of CCTVs through the private sector to monitor banks, shopping malls, and commercial establishments to prevent theft and fraud. Stage two marked the use of CCTV in the ‘key institutional areas of the public infrastructure’ such as schools, town halls, public libraries, and the transport sector. This particularly occurred in the mid1990s either because laws relating to public space surveillance were relaxed in some countries like France, or simply because CCTVs were slowly normalised through their use in the private sector. Stage three was run by public authorities under the guise of crime detection and prevention and involved the use of CCTV in public spaces such as town centres and streets. Stage four indicates the adoption of CCTVs moving towards ubiquity, with ‘hundreds of cameras providing blanket coverage of whole areas of a city’.