6.1 Could age assurance expand into a general permission system for the internet?

It should not, and the AVPA does not support that outcome. Age assurance should be limited to defined age restricted risks, with clear legal authority, proportionality, data minimisation and independent oversight. We do not support general purpose identity checks for ordinary internet use. The point of age assurance is to prove a narrow attribute, not to create a general licence to browse, speak or read online, and the technologies described in this FAQ are deliberately built so they cannot serve as identity infrastructure: they carry no identity data. Mission creep is a policy choice, not a property of the technology, and it is one legislators can and should rule out in the laws they write.  Liberal democracies will not find it any easier to introduce ID checks because age assurance is already in place (unless those who oppose ID checks continue to conflate them with age checks and persuade the public that ID checks are already in place) and totalitarian regimes tend not to be restrained in any case.