> So instead of using a photo ID so that everything is logged, register your every interaction online with the government directly.

Not just register, but ask permission for and give the government a veto on.

No, not every interaction. Given a token without user id, companies can check it's valid without contacting any government service and without knowing your identity.

And then the government sees where those tokens are used and they can easily monitor your every action, and revoke your ability to use certain sites if they don't like what you're saying.

North Korea wishes they came up with an idea this good.

Signature schemes can be validated without the signers involvement. No tokens need to go back to the government

And they do this over a network we know governments are constantly spying on?

This scenario doesn't make sense. Either govs can spy on your traffic and see everything (and don't need tokens for spying), or they can't and wouldn't be able to see the token. There's no scenario for: they can only spy on their tokens in your traffic.

Because it's possible to protect yourself against that with anonymity. That goes out the window the moment tokens tied to your real identity get involved.

Not to mention that it's likely they wouldn't be able to spy on absolutely everything you do, just parts of it. The tokens would be an obvious point of interest.

On top of that, it's probably a lot easier for the government to justify this kind of spying. They could probably twist information about token use as being some kind of "metadata", therefore "okay to spy on".