Generally "I wasn't driving then" is actually a defense to the automated cameras. The registered owner things is just the first pass like any other lazy investigation.

In the broader context PII is a looser concept, and can be thought of like browser fingerprinting. The legal system hasn't formalized it nearly to the same degree, but does have the concept of how enough otherwise public information sufficiently correlated can break into the realm of privacy violations. I. The browser fingerprinting world that's thought of pretty explicitly in terms of contributions of bits of entropy, but the legal system has pushed back on massive public surveillance when it steps into the realm of stalking or a firm of investigation that should require a warrant.

In the context of how that hack works, I'd argue that Bert and Ernie are working together to tag team the Xbox dashboard. Rather than cheating, seems broadly consensual to me, at least as far as Bert & Ernie are concerned.

License plate numbers are generally considered PII in their own right. A tuple of make, model, color, and year range is getting awfully close to an equivalent on its own as well.

That is the underlying consensus currently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking

And copying text. That's such a killer app for the web that's barely supported in native apps.