The annoying trend of pixelation

Whilst I accept that on occasions I have used "pixelation" to protect the identity of subjects of previous "Blogs", I am beginning to get more and more annoyed by its use on TV.

It never used to be the case during news broadcasts that every car registration number was pixelated or "fuzzed out". So why do they have to do it now? Is it to protect car drivers who are somewhere where they shouldn't be? How many devious, unscrupulous people can there be in the world? Maybe if there was more of a chance that they would get found out they would think twice before going somewhere that they shouldn't!

I was even watching an interview on TV the other evening with some professor or other, which was presumably filmed in his study or library. On one of the shelves behind him was what looked like a photo frame, with the contents pixelated out. What did he have to hide? If he didn't want anybody to see the photo - because, for example, he had an extremely ugly wife or children - he should have moved the photo out of shot!

The fact that the photo had been adjusted in this way just made me more inquisitive about its contents, whereas had it just been an ordinary photo I wouldn't have given it a second look.