I agree with the “sinister” part, but we are not at the stage where owning a camera is a crime against the state.
True. But, don’t you think this is a slippery slope?
Owning a camera wasn’t a crime against the state in the Soviet Union. I used to have a colleague—who since moved to another university—who is the only person anyone has ever heard of who successfully collected on a Soviet consumer warranty—a warranty on a camera. He actually traveled something like six hours out of Moscow to confront the manager of the plant that made the camera, and, for his trouble, got a new one to replace the defective.