The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.

> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book

Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.

(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)