I mean you lie about something, to make people pay for something thats fraud isn’t it? The TV detector vans never actually detected tvs. In their advert they definitely portrayed that they can see who and what you’re watching and the BBC even outright said they did.
So how in the hell weren’t they done? Or why there hell haven’t they been done?
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Real or fake you’re supposed to pay your licence fee anyway if applicable so it’s not really fraudulent.
God knows. Its all bollox and ever has been
IIRC, there’s *never* been a single prosecution based on detector vans
The only prosecutions to happen is some capita goon knocks on your door and says: you watching live tv, and you answer: yes
Well cleverly it isn’t public knowledge whether the vans actually continued detector equipment. Certainly the technology existed at the time, but whether the vans were actually kitted out with it is another matter. TV Licensing were able to refuse FoI requests asking if they contained such equipment on the basis it would harm their commercial operation.
In any case, it’s a criminal offence to watch TV without a licence (plans to decriminalise it were shelved). You’d struggle to mount a prosecution for fraud because you bought a TV Licence on the basis that a detector van had detection equipment inside when actually it didn’t, because it’s your legal obligation if you watch TV. It might technically meet the Section 5 fraud definition but.. Good luck.
TV detector vans worked because they could detect/receive the signals emitted by the cathode ray tube circuits that moved the electron beam.
The Russians used the same techniques to “see” what was on people’s computer screens.
I don’t believe that they were cost effective and that the returns from TV shops as to the home addresses where TVs were sold was the main means of finding evaders.
I grew up in NI in the 70s and 80s and in areas with paramilitary control NO-ONE there paid TV licences. No way was the RUC going to support a licence fee check.
…. because you do actually have to pay TV licence. They’re not tricking you into paying for something you don’t want/need … or that doesn’t exist. You are actually getting what you pay for.
TV licence is a massive bunch of bollocks
Most people were familiar with “spying” from the Cold War and this meme reflected that fear.
Similarly those Dalek head Death Star CCTV cameras you saw in Woolworths and Boots reflected feared sci fi tropes of the time.
They could tell if a device was receiving a signal, but not if that signal was from BBC
Old TVs and radios used a superheterodyne receiver. This is in the valve days. This converted the signal from broadcast frequency to an intermediate frequency, and then demodulated the actual signals for video and audio. The intermediate frequency would be detectable locally, and as this was a tuned signal it would be possible to demodulate and determine which channel was in use. In old radios the IF was generally 10.7 MHz, not sure about TV’s.
Whether the vans actually had the tech, I don’t know, but it was certainly feasible, and in the late 40s, 50s and early 60s there was so much surplus radar equipment around it would not have been expensive to assemble detectors from junk.
A TV program years ago demonstrated someone outside a building getting a grainy image of what a computer screen in the building was displaying.
It’s not fraud to persuade someone to pay something that they were legally obliged to pay in the first place.
They could detect that someone was using a TV receiver in the locality, so it was not all lies plus they had the addresses of those without a TV licence.
Because whats the fraud?
Also they mysteriously drop any cases when you ask a court to “prove” the evidence of the van