Watching the watchers: Why New Zealand’s age verification plan gets it backwards

New Zealand Herald: The goal is straightforward enough: keep children under 16 off social media. The method being pursued is anything but. New Zealand is quietly constructing a digital identity regime that would require every adult in the country to prove who they are before accessing platforms most people use every day. In… doing so, it risks building one of the most powerful surveillance architectures in the country’s history – and handing control of it to exactly the wrong organisation…