

To protect itself from attack, Estonia is finding ways to back up its data - edward
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21645505-protect-itself-attack-estonia-finding-ways-back-up-its-data-how?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/howtobackupacountry

======
aidos
Does anyone have more knowledge about how they use the digital identities in
Estonia? It sounds like everybody has a personal key that they use for signing
stuff. Is that correct? How is it distributed? If so, that's the most
fascinating part of the article to me.

~~~
jkaljundi
Please see:
[http://www.id.ee/index.php?id=30470](http://www.id.ee/index.php?id=30470)

Here's the technical architecture doc: [http://open-
eid.github.io/](http://open-eid.github.io/)

We all have either a credit-card sized chip card with our keys or a similar
mobile SIM card which uses SIM applications. Using those we can do basically
everything online, be it authentication to private or public services (using
PIN1), or digital signatures (using PIN2).

This is also available to anyone in the world, so feel free to apply for your
e-resident ID card here:
[https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/)

~~~
icebraining
Is there much concern in Estonia about the potential privacy leaks? We also
now have digital ID cards here in Portugal, but its use is for now fairly
limited - you can use them to log in to some governmental sites (like the
IRS), but no banks or other sites have adopted them.

I read on Wikipedia that some of your newspapers have started requiring it to
comment on their articles, and I'd be wary of such developments, since they're
so easy to justify (even to oneself) and to accept (since it makes
authentication even easier than remembering password).

How do you deal with the fact that most sites would like to have your unique,
cross-site identifiable key fingerprint?

~~~
DocG
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card#Uses_for_ident...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card#Uses_for_identification)

Apparently it is not used anymore?

Web commentary columns of some Estonian newspapers, most notably Eesti
Päevaleht, used to support ID-card based authentication for comments. This
approach caused some controversy in the internet community.[3]

~~~
jkaljundi
People are too lazy to use ID cards for something like commenting. More
importantly though, most Estonian comments are anonymous with people attacking
each other or politicians or whoever they like. Nobody wants to comment using
their real identity.

------
deanclatworthy
This is a fascinating article. Are there any other countries that are so open
with their failover strategies for critical national infrastructure?

------
chonoo
Instead of government-in-exile, we can now have roaming governments, with no
physical land, but with laws and services operating within a framework. It is
government without a country and it puts everyone on equal footing when
trading and building a reputation. Do we even need nation states any more?

Perhaps we will see the first virtual governments soon, existing solely as an
interface to facilitate identification, arbitration and trust. It could be
done over the internet and be a real example of virtual democracy. Looking
forward to it.

~~~
zby
I have always thought that we'll have some internet courts of arbitration that
would cut through the red tape of dealing with many jurisdictions. But can we
have sovereign states that exist only in the internet? I doubt - maybe there
will be some ingenious crypto systems that would make the systems more and
more independent form the physical servers (in a way like the bitcoin system)
- but eventually still the physical states will always be able to switch off
the virtual states if they wanted to and if they cooperated.

~~~
dandelion_lover
Here you go:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtland_%28micronation%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtland_%28micronation%29)
[http://wirtland.com/](http://wirtland.com/)

~~~
zby
The crucial question here is if the virtual state can do anything that would
be in conflict with the state that has jurisdiction over its servers. I think
that with some advanced cryptography this can work to some extent (with
servers behind tor and distributed in a manner that there is no one god-admin)
- but in the end [http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-
the-h...](http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-the-hidden-
internet/)

------
simonebrunozzi
"We will start issuing the cards by the end of 2014." \- well, they're late.

Also, why can't we use an Estonian embassy anywhere in the world?

~~~
Apofis
Probably because the embassies are not yet equipped to issue them yet.

Here's how you apply:
[https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/apply-2/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/apply-2/)

