> Keep dreaming of a technological solution -- there is none that does not lead to the world that FIRE is warning about, except to accept that we can only make a solution "good enough" and leave it at that, without expanding into full on identity verification.

The world that FIRE is warning about already exists in Australia, whose age verification laws prompted the article.

I'm an Australian. Our government passed the Assistance and Access bill on New Year's Eve in 2018, without much debate. The law allows them to demand "assistance" (code word for: you shall develop an undetectable spy app for us), and "access" (code word for: you shall silently install that app on the devices of any persons we nominate). Both requests are subject to a gag order.

As an example of what's possible, this allows them to demand Google "assists" them to develop an undetectable app that records the phone screen and keyboard usage at periodic intervals, and send it back to them, and then to demand Google installs it on devices owned by persons of interest.

The world has continued on. That may be because the tech bros are resisting helping (there were threats by a government head of security implying they weren't getting the level of compliance they wanted). But it may also be because we are a democracy, and blatant misuse of powers like this is likely to get you unelected. I've seen a few cases where it "felt" like the government bureaucracies used this tool against whistleblowers, which made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. But I don't know, and until recently they had a remarkably good track record against local terrorism. The recent exception is the recent Bondi killings, where a completely bonkers father convinced his son to go on a shooting spree. But they managed to maintain complete radio silence during the perpetration stage - I guess it was all planned over the kitchen table. That couldn't be detected by any surveillance network.

So for now, it looks like they have used the tool according to the rules laid down in the bill. All spying requires independent judicial orders, which I'm fairly sure they obtained. (To put that into perspective - when the threshold is "the person broke the law" and you get to write the laws, the threshold is not quite as high as it might appear - particularly for government whistleblowers that pissed off the incumbents.)

But for most of us, whose "crimes" are at most indulging in naughty pleasures, the bill offers pretty good privacy guarantees. If the government doesn't follow its own laws all bets are off, of course - and yes, this very scenario is playing out in another Five Eyes country. But if the government does follow its own rules, then any government-backed zero-knowledge proof scheme that includes a snitch code that can only be unlocked by a judicial order is going to be fine.

TL;DR: for the scenario FIRE is worried about, the horse bolted 8 years ago in Australia. The current alternative of being forced to hand over photos, identity documents, and god knows what other PII to random web sites is far worse in terms of privacy than a zero-knowledge proof of age issued by the government - even if isn't truly private.