former

22:50 May 19, 2011 

If the original text mention the CCTV it is not irrelevant, no matter what you think of it. There are various sytems in the wide world we are living in, they are not all alike and there is space enough for all of them, there should be space enough for your opinion and for mine... My experience may be different from yours but CCTV can be triggered by movement sensors... If you do not know it, you narrow your thinking to what you once learned when language and technology are both fields which are ever changing and evolving... Let the Asker decide what is nonsense and what is not.

21:56 May 19, 2011 

I really think it's irrelevant to focus on the CCTV aspect, the issue is simply burglar / fire alarm system.

It would be complete technical nonsense if 'the former' referred to 'a CCTV system' — there's no earthly reason why a CCTV sytem would use movement sensors.

Please take my word for this, I am a specialist in this field, and it's important not to risk clouding the issue for Asker with irrelevancies.

21:50 May 19, 2011 

Hmm... That's where we disagree then... To me the CCTV and burglar alarm are not to be taken one without the other and I would then agree with you that the sensors only relate to that CCTV/burglar part... It also makes no sense to me where the fire alarm is concerned... So it seems our disagreement on this is slighter than what I first thought...

21:05 May 19, 2011 

The whole CCTV aspect of this is pretty much a red herring, and the context would be easier to understand if it were omitted:

"It has a ... burglar and fire alarm control centre made up of movement sensors (for the former) and continuous recording video cameras ..."

It is perfectly obvious to me, as a specialist in this field, and having just translated a huge set of tender specifications about this very subject, that the movement sensors obviously only relate to the burglar alarm part of the system (they wouldn't be relevant in a fire alarm system), and hence 'the former' quite clearly relates to 'burglar alarm' (the equivalent 'latter' would of course be 'fire alarm').