This kind of lawmaking seems obvious insane to logical programmer types, but it happens regularly in government. They don't have to implement anything in code, right?
Another example is anti-money laundering laws. They drew a cutline at $10k cash per deposit, so of course criminals started depositing $9,999 at a time. The legislative answer was to say that avoiding the $10k limit is a new crime called "structuring". So what's the actual limit then? There isn't one, you just have to not seem too suspicious. Attempting to follow the law whilst also using a lot of cash is itself a crime.
The other fun one is the suspicious activity reports banks are required to file if a customer does something, er, suspicious. What that means isn't defined anywhere. But eventually the regulators advised that knowing SARs exist is itself suspicious, so merely asking if the bank has filed a SAR on you can trigger the filing of a SAR on you.
Another example is anti-money laundering laws. They drew a cutline at $10k cash per deposit, so of course criminals started depositing $9,999 at a time. The legislative answer was to say that avoiding the $10k limit is a new crime called "structuring". So what's the actual limit then? There isn't one, you just have to not seem too suspicious. Attempting to follow the law whilst also using a lot of cash is itself a crime.
The other fun one is the suspicious activity reports banks are required to file if a customer does something, er, suspicious. What that means isn't defined anywhere. But eventually the regulators advised that knowing SARs exist is itself suspicious, so merely asking if the bank has filed a SAR on you can trigger the filing of a SAR on you.