The No-Contact Apprehension Policy, or NCAP, remains in limbo after the Supreme Court issued last year a temporary restraining order against its implementation on complaints that it violated the public's right to due process and the right to privacy.

Before the legality of the NCAP was put before the SC, motorists complained that the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and various local government units in the capital region abused the system to wantonly slap motorists with traffic violation tickets.

As the case is pending and is sub judice, we'll let the protagonists slug it out in the legal arena, hoping that our learned magistrates of the SC will render a fair decision that will also be in lockstep with our technologically changing world.

In the meantime, the MMDA and Metro Manila LGUs have announced a plan to integrate all closed-circuit television systems in the metropolis so they could cobble together an interoperable platform that, hopefully, would be useful in police investigations and the solution of crimes.

There have been many crimes where the perpetrators were identified with the help of CCTV cameras, especially those committed in public places, where their escape routes were traced.

Backtracking by cops has proven to be an effective tool when criminals, thinking they had gotten far away from the scene of their dastardly deed, lowered their guard, and removed their helmets, caps, and masks.

The MMDA and LGUs, pending the resolution of the NCAP legal tussle, naturally have to find some use for their CCTV systems. Interconnecting and making them accessible through one system would certainly come in handy when metro-wide police actions that are in synch are needed, like when intercepting fleeing criminals at checkpoints.

Some would be inclined to clap back that CCTVs feed off an Orwellian scenario of governments becoming omniscient and manipulative of people's lives, throwing away individual freedoms.

George Orwell's novel "1984," it has to be pointed out, was written in the aftermath of World War 2 against the fear of another Nazi Germany rising. The Cold War, with the Soviet Union at the center of the paranoia, would make "1984" a powerful, disturbing, and nearly prophetic work of fiction.