Amusingly enough, I originally opened with a half paragraph about how the lack of prosecution shouldn’t be viewed as evidence of anything about the existence of

Amusingly enough, I originally opened with a half paragraph about how the lack of prosecution shouldn’t be viewed as evidence of anything about the existence of the tv detector vans. But I cut it while drafting. Your completely right about the vans never being a source of evidence for a prosecution. The complete lack of direct evidence tying a ban to a prosecution reminds me of the way the FBI are now treating Stingray cell site hijack tools… But it likely comes down to a combination of the enforcement agency’s limited powers and inherent ambiguities that couldn’t be eliminated from the technology. If they couldn’t prove that their signal couldn’t be coming from a TV in the neighbouring row house with perhaps a meter of separation and mirrored layouts placing rooms like master bedrooms and lounge rooms commonly back to back on the adjoining wall, and they lack the power to force someone to let them in, they effectively have their hands tied… but I can definitely see how it would be useful as a tool to quickly cull down lists of hundreds of potential unlicensed premises and to provide the sort of inadmissible hearsay that would provide internal evidence/justification for investigations using other means that could then actually be used for prosecution. I suppose it was a hollow threat in the sense they could never just lock you up because some detector van snooped you out driving down the street. But in the sense that it was likely an efficient tool to help the agents doing the enforcement work over a large area, the side effect of selling it to the public was probably a bit of clever PR scam pulled by the enforcement agency, who needed all the help they could get since famously, you didn’t have to let them in which sort of cuts off a lot of ways for them to prove/investigate anything.