Dictionary

By Thomas Slack

Automatic number plate recognition

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is a surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates. They can use existing closed-circuit television or road-rule enforcement cameras, or cameras specifically designed for it. They are used by many police forces as a method of toll collection on pay-per-use roads and cataloguing movements of traffic or individuals

Bulletin Board

A bulletin board system (BBS) is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins and exchanging with other users, either through email, public message boards, and sometimes via direct chatting. Many BBSes also offer online games

CCTV

CCTV stands for closed circuit television, and is used everywhere throughout the world. Most of the cameras you see throughout the day will be CCTV cameras. Some more advanced camera systems carry facial recognition software and ANPR systems

Cookie

A cookie (HTTP cookie, web cookie or browser cookie) is a small piece of data sent form a website and stored on a users hard drive while the user is on a website. When the user visits the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the to notify it of the users previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user months or even years ago

Electronic Consumer Surveillance

Electronic article surveillance (EAS) is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores or stealing of books from libraries. Special tags are fixed to merchandise or books. These tags are removed or deactivated by the clerks when the item is properly bought or checked out. At the exits of the store, a detection system sounds an alarm or otherwise alerts the staff when it senses active tags. For high-value goods that are to be manipulated by the patrons, wired alarm clips may be used instead of tags.

Key Logging

Keystroke logging (more often called keylogging or "keyloggers") is the action of tracking (or logging) the keys pressed on a keyboard, typically in a covert manner so that the person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored. It also has very legitimate uses in studies of human-computer interaction. There are numerous keylogging methods, ranging from hardware and software-based approaches to electromagnetic and acoustic analysis.

Mobile Phone Triangulation

Mobile phone tracking refers to the attaining of the current position of a mobile phone, stationary or moving. Localization may occur either via multilateration of radio signals between (several) radio towers of the network and the phone, or simply via GPS. To locate the phone using multilateration of radio signals, it must emit at least the roaming signal to contact the next nearby antenna tower, but the process does not require an active call. GSM is based on the signal strength to nearby antenna masts.

OCR

Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used as a form of data entry from some sort of original paper data source, whether documents, sales receipts, mail, or any number of printed records. It is a common method of digitizing printed texts so that they can be electronically searched, stored more compactly, displayed on-line, and used in machine processes such as machine translation, text-to-speech and text mining. OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and computer vision.

Version Control

Revision control, also known as version control and source control (and an aspect of software configuration management), is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, large web sites, and other collections of information. Changes are usually identified by a number or letter code, termed the "revision number", "revision level", or simply "revision". For example, an initial set of files is "revision 1". When the first change is made, the resulting set is "revision 2", and so on. Each revision is associated with a timestamp and the person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and with some types of files, merged.

VoIP

Voice over IP (VoIP, or voice over Internet Protocol) commonly refers to the communication protocols, technologies, methodologies, and transmission techniques involved in the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. Other terms commonly associated with VoIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, IP communications, and broadband phone. One example is Skype

Worker Monitoring

Supermarket checkouts can monitor how many products put through by an employee in an hour. Network managers use them to check if employees are doing work, or browsing the internet instead