I think you misunderstand what "privacy-preserving" means here. The whole point is that they CAN identify you (to verify your age), but in... well a privacy-preserving manner :-).
That is, one side knows who you are, but not what you do; the other side knows what you do, not who you are.
> And even if it's illegal to hand them out, it's not hard to set up a tor site to do it.
If a kid can use Tor to get a token, they most certainly can download with torrent or use a VPN to bypass the verification. But again, it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be effective for enough kids.
> I would be first in line to counter the state with such an implementation of this is the path we tread.
In a functioning democracy, people should vote instead of vandalising stuff. In a non-functional democracy, I guess don't complain if someone burns your car "to counter the state" some day if you think like this.
My point is that we should fight for privacy-preserving solutions. And the first step is to get informed about whether or not it is possible to verify the age in a privacy-preserving manner. Not to prepare for vandalism.
