Is there a version without the Leninist symbol that I could send to my relatives?

Thanks for the discussion and thanks for raising the issue.

Yeah, I think its a misunderstanding of European political development to think that EU governments would willingly violate their code of human rights like that.

The same anarchist argument could be made about pensions or the military, but the societal benefits of those institutions outweigh the risks of their potential corruption by autocrats.

Anarchism does have its place, and it’s important that the EU weighs the risk and reward of centralized idps carefully, and doesn’t blindly go for the save the children argument. The use of strict age verification probably isn’t worth the risk outside of extreme risks to children’s health, like pornography, gambling, and drugs. That is something that the European Commission themselves have said too. Stuff that completely misses that balance like Chat Control needs to die.

From your source:

These are used in zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) – a way for two parties to validate that one of them asserts a fact without learning what that fact is in the process (this is super cool stuff). Users can send their subcredentials to a third party, who can use a ZKP to validate them without learning anything else about the user – so you could prove your age (or even just prove that you are over 18 without disclosing your age at all) without disclosing your identity.

All the arguments against ZKP on the following paragraphs misunderstand the way the state and intergovernmental institutions, and the rule of law work in the EU. Many EU countries already have digital identity providers that are used every day by their citizens. I think very few people are arguing in favor of dismantling them.

Nah the EU has GDPR. Any age verification is completely anonymous.

yeah but we’re talking about the Dutch here