The most likely explanation is that the system either doesn't have the capacity to provide full read access without write access, or they were ordered to be pro

The most likely explanation is that the system either doesn't have the capacity to provide full read access without write access, or they were ordered to be provided "full access" and then the part of the bureaucracy implementing that directive interpreted it as including write access. This is obviously not ideal, but the real question is, are they actually modifying anything (and if so , what?), or it is just a permissions level they're not actually using for anything? We also can't rule out media hysteria yet, e.g. "write code" could plausibly be something like "write SQL queries" which doesn't inherently imply any modification to the database tables.