How come not? I typically hear of some scammy Zero-Knowledge Proof promising the world and delivering either an easy-to-pass-around identifier or something readily able to be mapped back to you as a person.

I feel like we're talking about completely different things. What's currently implemented in various EU countries is basically OAuth, where user attributes are verified by the state. Being able to map that account back to a specific person isn't a bug, but the whole reason for the system's existence.

Here's a marketing page for a WIP pan-EU project to implement this kind of digital ID: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-soci...

There are also various plans for age-verification schemes that should (partially) preserve anonymity, but those aren't implemented and it's not what people mean by "digital ID".

I work in Zero Knowledge Proofs, and they are a great mathematical tool. But they ain't magic.

Yes you can, eID means that you can prove your identity online using your digital signature.

Can is the key word here. As implemented today, users can choose whether to use digital ID. In my opinion, problems would only start if the users had no choice and the government was the one choosing for them.

And of course absolutely no government ever, ever, decided that it was legitimate to choose for its citizens.