[tdicola]

I'd argue its an omission or mistake with the spec then. Being able to passively collect sensor data without connecting to a device is very handy as it allows many devices to read data from many local sensors. If they all have to connect to each sensor then there's contention over the connection (only one device can connect to a sensor at a time) and it wastes power to setup and tear down the connection constantly (negating the whole point of BLE).

If advertising isn't for putting data then arguably iBeacon, URI Beacon, Eddystone, etc. go against the spirit of the BLE spec.