The system was specifically designed to prevent that too. To install Asahi Linux, you need the macOS user password. You probably don't have it. No worries, just factory-reset it. Now you have to get through activation before you can set a user password.
There's some pre-activation done out of the factory so that the Mac doesn't need to call home and check for lock on first boot out of the box, but if you wipe it, that's gone, and it does need to call home.
That would not work; the lock is implemented by the SOC at a level higher than macOS- it is done by what is now the integrated features of the T2 SOC, which has its own little RAM and does it's own disk access and encryption and controls the boot-ability of anything off the SSD.
The operating system is not what is implementing the lock.
There's some pre-activation done out of the factory so that the Mac doesn't need to call home and check for lock on first boot out of the box, but if you wipe it, that's gone, and it does need to call home.