
The Estonian president wants a more digitally-integrated Europe - tomaac
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/why-cant-the-estonian-president-buy-a-song-off-itunes-for-his-latvian-wife/
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AndrewDucker
The article is so much more than what the headline indicates.

I wish more politicians were like this man.

~~~
gravypod
I started watching this video expecting for him to be like all of my
politicians are. I am happy that I was wrong.

He seems to actually understand the underlying technology that he is pushing,
and it seems like it is working.

Is anyone here from Estonia who could comment on these new systems?

~~~
Strom
The digital systems work pretty well.

The digital prescriptions are definitely convenient, especially as you can get
them renewed via e-mail to your doctor and thus skip any visitation bills.

I also still remember my amazement when it took me literally 5 minutes to
register a new company online, 10 years ago. Not that much different from
opening a Twitter account.

An even older system is the tax one, where everything is automated and I don't
have to even think about it. I can just annually review the automatically
calculated data and press accept to get some money back.

~~~
gravypod
That's amazing. It seems like a polar opposite from the USA.

I'd not trust my government to develop any software for me to use but it seems
like your government has an idea of how to make that work.

He mentioned it was all open source in the video. That's really cool and helps
go the extra mile in my opinion to make it more acceptable to the end user.

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bergie
There is a campaign collecting signatures to end geoblocking within EU:
[https://endgeoblocking.eu/](https://endgeoblocking.eu/)

~~~
laacz
Why is there no verification of email adress you submit? Sadly it's hard to
take seriously such a petition.

~~~
throwaway7767
Would it be easier to take seriously if there were verification of email
address? It's not like there's any requirement for identity verification
before provisioning of an email account.

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dragandj
Perhaps they do not like his money and are trying to convince him to torrent
the music.

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carlob
But this has nothing to do with credit cards and everything to do with the
media industry. It's the exact same thing as those braindead DVD regions, or
youtube restrictions in Germany, or netflix national catalogues.

~~~
marklit
It might not be mentioned in the article but a lot of online retailers,
including with 50% of the purchases I try to make on Amazon.co.uk, refuse to
ship to Estonia. Even digital good can often be difficult to purchase.

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mk89
I agree on further digitalization of public services and stuff - come on, ...
here in Germany you must store every kind of receipt for tax declaration (I
don't know how this works in other countries, I just find it ridiculous
nowadays). However, what the president of Estonia is talking about is
basically not applicable to most of the current European countries, where
people/countries raise walls, other countries threaten to leave, or where
national interests are way higher than European ones.

In addition, I would also like to say that it's important to keep in mind that
Estonia is a smaller country compared to others in Europe (it has ~ 1.5
million people, more or less the amount of people living/working in
Cologne/Amsterdam/Milan). This means that they can be more focused and can
invest more selectively. If you want to digitalize a country like Germany you
need to change how many cities and towns? And ... how many laws that require
still "paper" proof? It's not impossible, it just takes more time. That's it.

I hope that the president will be able to convince European countries to
improve their IT infrastructure. That's cool. However, bigger countries won't
see that coming in the next 5-10 years at least.

~~~
jamesblonde
Germany is ridiculously far behind. It's partly because of federalism, but
mostly because of the fear of the state and desire for extreme levels of
privacy. Here in Sweden, everything is digitalized and it makes life easy. I
think of this externality of managing your taxes and stuff like that as
"societal tax". Time is money, and countries like Germany and the US have
ridiculously high levels of "societal tax" \- you have to think so much to
make simple decisions. Can i fix this problem with the govt in an afternoon,
should I save this receipt for my tax declaration, to things like do I trust
the taxi will turn up on time, will the train arrive on time?

~~~
gurkendoktor
> Germany is ridiculously far behind. It's partly because of federalism, but
> mostly because of the fear of the state and desire for extreme levels of
> privacy.

I think you are missing the elephant in the room: our (German) complete and
utter incompetence when it comes to software development.

Declaring taxes for my business still involves mailing many dead trees around
the country, and I hate it. But what's the alternative, sinking billions of
euros into a public software project that might be as crappy as Toll Collect?

~~~
mk89
I agree with you, and the only way to improve that is to invest more in
"software" (in general), although things are moving slowly, yet they move.

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trymas
Great push for use of latest technologies, especially for government sector.

I skimmed the article, and I do not see a mention of Estonia's e-voting.
AFAIK, they are using (IMHO) flawed system, that they just believe it works
(i.e. it was not breached). Estonia is very innovative in technological
sector, but their e-voting system is a very risky play with their democracy.

~~~
tauntz
"they are using (IMHO) flawed system" Care to elaborate on this?

~~~
johansch
E-voting is flawed by design. The voting secret is lost.

(What is to stop the husband to control who the wife votes for, or vice
versa?)

~~~
Natanael_L
Don't vote remotely.

[https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/an-
mp...](https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/an-mpc-based-
privacy-preserving-flexible-cryptographic-voting-scheme/)

~~~
johansch
"and the only way to force individual voters to vote as you wish is to
physically watch them vote."

Yes, exactly.

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Symmetry
That sounds like a wonderful idea in general but I wonder how the legal issues
would play out? If a company offers music for cheaper than would be legal in
France in Estonia then a French citizen buys it for themselves would the
company be liable under French law? How about a video game that involves
shooting Nazis and which has a swastika in it but some German citizen buys it?
I'm not sure how this could work without integrating European legal systems
more.

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sickbeard
Hrm I'm struggling to see how it is/was any difference from years ago when
games/movies were region locked. Protectionism has always been the name of the
game.

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timonoko
One must remember that Estonia started from zero, as regards to bureaucracy. I
wish had a picture of Estonian coast guard 1991, schoolkids in wooden WII
soviet gasboat. But very serious and with AK-47, so I do not have the picture.

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imakesoft
But the biggest problem is that iTunes itself is badly developed? Apple way is
that each user has a Macbook which has an iTunes to which user can sync
her/his iPhone. Syncing many mobile devices into one machine with one iTunes
gets messy.

~~~
terrywilcox
I'm guessing you didn't get past the headline.

