

Estonia to create “data embassies” to protect its digital identity - delorenzo
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/estonia-redefines-national-security-digital-age-150318065430514.html

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jamespitts
Nations distribute gold, cultural information, legal information, and many
other aspects of their deepest national functionality, so this is nothing new.
Erasing a nation is nothing new as well; take a close look at what happened to
the people of Poland during World War II.

Beyond the obvious necessity of restoration if your neighbors are prone to
invading, the capability is also preventative -- it increases the long-term
cost to the country considering invading.

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Terr_
[Spoiler alert!] Reminds me of the plot for Die Hard 4.

The villain is waging damaging cyber-attacks, but his real goal is different:
He's trying to force the government to enact on of their own emergency plans,
which collects and stores the "digital crown-jewels" into a secret sort-of-
offsite backup... One that he knows how to steal.

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pnathan
From a bog standard American perspective, this is amazing. I'd love to hear
some commentary from an Estonian about this.

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belZaah
For starters, it is worth understanding our size. 1.4 million people make it
much easier to pull something like this off than, say, 320 million.

The challenges are still considerable. The thing is that this basically means
our key information systems must cloud-ready and such a migration triggers a
change in the organisation. Which is not the main strength of a government
agency. We are also looking at various ways of using cryptography as, to an
extent, the control over the hardware must be relinquished.

Overall this is a huge technical challenge driven by basically unique level of
government innovation. Basically we a re-inventing what it means to be a
country (see also e-residency).

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pnathan
That is amazing. :-)

