The "age-assurance industry" is like the worm in Tremors. All you see at first is a single, ugly medium-sized strand that should be cut and put on a bonfire.

But then you see another, and then you discover they are small sensors for a monstrous beast that will eat your community alive.

The laughably named "age-assurance industry" should be called the data harvesting industry. That's all it's doing, under the guise of new, statutory mandates.

As for California Gov, Gavin Newsom, he's proven an able foil for Donald Trump's propaganda, but I wouldn't let him near the job of chief executive of any governmental organization.

It's a division of labor: the governments state their intrusive wishes vaguely as a "law". At best, some government agency provides an API specification, but it's mostly static and focused on the exchange of data, not on any due process for requests and responses.

"Implementation issues" are then left to corporations, that "promise" to comply with regulations. That shallow promise is what governments are after, to abdicate from their responsibilities. Problem solved.

The result is a public-private partnership in crime, where citizens deprived of their right are sent through the deserts of legal action, for years, to die of thirst.

It is hard to get governments to distrust predatory corporations as long as such corporations are a vehicle to help governments wash their hands in innocence.