Actually, it’s true. When the ray emitter of the cathode ray tube scans the phosphorus screen, it energizes coated cells on the screen. As the ray moves on, the energy of each cell decays creating a negative balance of photons. In this case, they become a vacuum of sorts and will absorb light from the surrounding area….light from your room. Imagine this charge and pull as if you were in a bathtub. You push water away from you (positive charge), but then create a trough (negative charge) that is immediately filled by the surrounding water.
When this happens, the light is absorbed and reconstructed much the same as any picture from a camera. The excess photons are funneled to an N-channel collector that polarizes them for sorting and transmission (to avoid decay). On the receiving end, they can gather this excess photonic energy to reproduce a picture on the far side. So yeah…..they CAN see you through the TV. It’s true.
With Plasma and LED TVs, the technology is a bit different, but follows the same basic scheme.