[petercooper]

As is true of many laws in England and Wales, having weakly enforced laws on the books can come in handy when there's someone you want to nail but on whom you can't solidly pin anything else.

In a way, this is one of the beauties of our legal system. Something as simple as swearing in public is an arrestable offense but almost no-one casually swearing within earshot of an officer would get hauled in. If that person were antagonising people, acting "suspiciously", etc, then it gives the officer a handy way to haul them in without proving a different offense.

Likewise, the "cookie law" could be a way of reeling a dangerous Web site in when there's no solid proof of anything else they're doing.