One of Estonia's First 'e-Residents' Explains What It Means To Have Digital Citizenship 76
An anonymous reader shares a report from Quartz, written by Estonian e-Resident April Rinne: In 2014, Estonia, a country previously known as much for its national singing revolution as anything else, became the first country in the world to launch an e-Residency program. Once admitted, e-Residents can conduct business worldwide as if they were from Estonia, which is a member of the EU. They are given government-issued digital IDs, can open Estonian bank and securities accounts, form and register Estonian companies, and have a front-row seat as nascent concepts of digital and virtual citizenship evolve. There is no requirement to have a physical presence in Estonia. [...] Three years in, what I find most incredible about e-Residency is that it actually works.
E-Residency was appealing to me for several reasons (none of which include dodging the law, taxes, or other civic responsibilities). I have Finnish heritage and for many years was intrigued by Finland's "smaller neighbor." And, I'd just joined an Estonian startup as an advisor. Becoming an e-Resident would allow me to receive payment from clients in Euros from any company without worrying about currency fluctuations, and to own shares in the company (previously this would have required various administrative work-arounds). [...] At a basic level, e-Residency makes working overall simpler and, ideally, more streamlined. This plays out in many ways, depending on the type of worker or organization. For example, many bona fide small- and mid-sized companies in other regions simply could not get access to European markets. The costs of entry and other requirements made it prohibitively cumbersome. E-Residency gives them a new avenue to do this; they still have to prove their merits, but the playing field is more level. For independent entrepreneurs, especially those working in different countries, Estonia makes the entire process of establishing and maintaining a small business easier, faster and more affordable. In my case, I'm able to transact, bank, and sign documents easily. I still maintain my U.S. presence -- because a non-trivial amount of my portfolio is in the U.S., and I maintain a range of local commitments and community -- but many of my fellow e-Residents have shifted their entire enterprise to Estonia. In conclusion, Rinne notes the imperfections of the residency: "multiple times I had to disable firewalls to get digital services to work, and the e-Residency team discovered a potential bug in late 2017 which led them to deactivate all ID cards until they could be updated through the internet." All in all the experience has been "useful beyond measure," Rinne writes. "It has enabled me to re-think not only how I work, but also the many ways in which the world of work itself is changing and emerging opportunities for the future."
E-Residency was appealing to me for several reasons (none of which include dodging the law, taxes, or other civic responsibilities). I have Finnish heritage and for many years was intrigued by Finland's "smaller neighbor." And, I'd just joined an Estonian startup as an advisor. Becoming an e-Resident would allow me to receive payment from clients in Euros from any company without worrying about currency fluctuations, and to own shares in the company (previously this would have required various administrative work-arounds). [...] At a basic level, e-Residency makes working overall simpler and, ideally, more streamlined. This plays out in many ways, depending on the type of worker or organization. For example, many bona fide small- and mid-sized companies in other regions simply could not get access to European markets. The costs of entry and other requirements made it prohibitively cumbersome. E-Residency gives them a new avenue to do this; they still have to prove their merits, but the playing field is more level. For independent entrepreneurs, especially those working in different countries, Estonia makes the entire process of establishing and maintaining a small business easier, faster and more affordable. In my case, I'm able to transact, bank, and sign documents easily. I still maintain my U.S. presence -- because a non-trivial amount of my portfolio is in the U.S., and I maintain a range of local commitments and community -- but many of my fellow e-Residents have shifted their entire enterprise to Estonia. In conclusion, Rinne notes the imperfections of the residency: "multiple times I had to disable firewalls to get digital services to work, and the e-Residency team discovered a potential bug in late 2017 which led them to deactivate all ID cards until they could be updated through the internet." All in all the experience has been "useful beyond measure," Rinne writes. "It has enabled me to re-think not only how I work, but also the many ways in which the world of work itself is changing and emerging opportunities for the future."
Welcome to the Creepshow (Score:2)
"I'm from a land called secret Estonia
Nobody knows where it's at "
Anyone who has played Burnout Paradise knows all about Estonia.
https://youtu.be/K6SvTAzZlLw [youtu.be]
In the EU (Score:2)
So does that mean I could work in any EU country for an unlimited amount of time?
Re:In the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah. so less useful. Also, you have to be fingerprinted. I'm not sure why, but it certainly seems creepy - especially given India's breeches.
Re:In the EU (Score:5, Funny)
India's breeches are dhoti!
Re: (Score:1)
It's essentially a government issued, legally binding, digital signature.
Re: (Score:2)
And I need to be fingerprinted for that because...?
Re: (Score:2)
And a photo, password, signature, are all inadequate because?
Re: (Score:1)
What if you have an evil identical twin?
Re: In the EU (Score:2)
From your lack of knowledge I take it that current location is the US.
While the world is full of shit-hole countries Estonia isn't one of them.
Re: (Score:2)
From your lack of knowledge I take it that current location is the US.
While the world is full of shit-hole countries Estonia isn't one of them.
From your lack of tact, I take it that you're from one of those elitist shit-holes that look down on everything from the US in spite of the fact that they have all their own issues.
Re: (Score:1)
When will the borderless future finally arrive so rich jerks can have all the cheap labor they want?!
Uh... now? How about right now?
Re: (Score:1)
Where in the New Orker article did they even suggest that you could become a citizen through e-residency?
Re: (Score:3)
Shame because a lot of British people looking to retain EU citizenship would have jumped at that. Maybe that's why they limited it, they don't want waves of British e-refugees flooding them like the Irish have seen.
Re: (Score:2)
Shame because a lot of British people looking to retain EU citizenship would have jumped at that. Maybe that's why they limited it, they don't want waves of British e-refugees flooding them like the Irish have seen.
Close, but no cigar. Estonia's e-residency has been around for quite some time before the Brits took leave of their senses.
EU has a (fire)wall (Score:3)
Please be aware that e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union.
And they made Elbonia pay for it.
Beware Estonia's dark side (Score:5, Funny)
Inner-city neighborhoods crammed with illegal e-aliens running cheap PCs, chattering away in Visual Basic ("Build the firewall!"). Coal-fueled mob servers churning out Bitcoin. Dismal landfills overflowing with the world's discarded ones and zeros. Homeless burned-out developers wearing bubble wrap against the winter chill, huddled around flaming barrels of obsolete O'Reilly Manual editions.
For every digital heaven, there's a digital hell.
Re: (Score:2)
> huddled around flaming barrels of obsolete O'Reilly Manual editions.
Love That. Really do
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> huddled around flaming barrels of obsolete O'Reilly Manual editions.
Love That. Really do
O'Really?
Re: (Score:2)
Getting paid in Euro when you already live in a country that has EUR is not that spectacular...
Quoth the fine summary:
I have Finnish heritage... ... I still maintain my U.S. presence...
She's not a citizen of Finland--she's an American of Finnish descent.
Re: (Score:3)
So (Score:3, Interesting)
By now, the whole country has basically been forced to get a 2FA Token (which you can only use for banking or state stuff, it's not as if I can couple it to auth to my ssh servers). Technically they call it a signing server token, so - if I understand it correctly - a server signs on your behalf if you authenticate right. It is also immensely funny when their service is down.
At least that thing works with non-Microsoft systems, so that's good.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
I haven't found the source code yet. Will keep looking.
It probably means they had decent people consulting the decision makers. For my country it feels as if someone so
Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Modern but also kind of risky (Score:3, Insightful)
I first welcomed Estonia's online program, which is truly unique and remarkable. It's very modern. But over the time, I've become more wary of it.
The problem is that like for all Baltic country's the biggest threat for Estonia is currently Russia - which has unfortunately demonstrated multiple times recently that they have no moral problems with invading neighbouring countries, undermining their political system, or annexing large parts of them. NATO can protect Estonia against a physical attack, although in numbers the NATO forces are spread dangerously thin. However, there is a real potential for dangerous online attacks, including e.g. messing with e-voting systems and other central government services.
Of course, Estonian authorities are fully aware of that, but without their fault endpoint security is overall so bad that there is reason to worry that they might be unable to prevent a serious attack some day.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
what a load of crap.
Re:Modern but also kind of risky (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia won't invade Estonia - the country is simply not important enough. But there has been a political pissing contest between Estonia and Russia for over two decades, so Russia hacking Estonian systems for the sole purpose of annoying the Estonian government is a perfectly realistic scenario.
Re:Modern but also kind of risky (Score:4, Insightful)
Russia has invaded Georgia and split off part of it, invaded Ukraine and annexed a large part of it, and there is also Transistria, a charming military nostalgia self-proclaimed republic that split off from Moldavia and is directly subsidized and indirectly administered by Russia. So yeah, Russia could invade Estonia any time if they weren't in the NATO. You'd need to be blind on both eyes to not see that.
Re: (Score:3)
Do yourself a favour and go educate yourself a little bit to see what actually happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Estonia, on the other hand, is a stable country that had no civil war, no real rebellion and no real reason for rebellion as well - even though they treat their minorities like crap, their standard of living is still the best among the former Soviet republics, which sort of balances it out.
And as for being blind on both eye
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if you don't want to believe what I have seen (mina olen saksa, aga... well, I nevertheless still remember some Estonian from my extensive travels there about twelve years ago, the only place I haven't visited was Hiiumaa), here you are:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Most Russians were being treated like second class citizens, only worse - they weren't able to get an actual Estonian citizenship because one of the requirements for the naturalisation was to speak Eston
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't relying on hearsay, I was listing facts.
Re: (Score:2)
Look at a map. If Russia invades Estonia the Baltic fleet is not as bottle up as it is now, and NATO forces are much further away from the second largest city in the Russian Federation. It is of huge strategic importance to them in a war.
Re: (Score:2)
You do realise that the Baltic fleet is headquartered in Kaliningrad, right? Invading Estonia would not make the fleet any less bottled up and besides all the Soviet naval facilities in Paldiski are long gone.
Re:Modern but also kind of risky (Score:4, Interesting)
Russia won't invade Estonia - the country is simply not important enough.
I speak Russian really well (not fluent, but really good nonetheless) and I spent a good deal of time in Ukraine in the previous decade. I definitely understand the region more than most here. While they may not invade Estonia, it will have nothing at all to do with how important it is or isn't. That's not a consideration. Putin simply wants to reacquire as much of the former USSR as he reasonably can or turn those nations into something like tributary states (ie. Belarus) or anti-Western allies (more or less all the so-called "Stan" countries). Trump is extremely unpredictable, mostly by design, and he's shown a willingness to kill Russians already in Syria. Early in the presidency Putin was feeling him out to see if he might really and truly leave the European NATO countries hanging in the wind like he threatened to do, but Putin has to know that there is a big chance now that any invasion of a Baltic NATO member would result in a war that isn't going to end with Putin winning, so it won't happen, but yes, Russians will continue to try to undermine the Baltic countries as much as possible.
Re:Modern but also kind of risky (Score:4)
Well, gee, I speak Russian really well, too (and I am actually fluent, my Russian is not much worse than my English) and I have spent some time in the Ukraine as well, exactly three years ago, as it is.
Why exactly do you think that your understanding of the region is better than mine? Especially since I do realise that the main thing that broke up the USSR were the numerous ethnic conflicts, hence it would not make any sense whatsoever to reacquire as much of the former USSR as possible, but you, on the other hand, seem to consider Putin a some kind of a comic book villain.
And as for any undermining - like I said, it is more like a pissing contest, or like unpleasant neighbours annoying each other at every opportunity. All four sides are equally guilty of being dicks, with one dick naturally being much larger, but the other three trying really hard to compensate.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why the Estonians founded a "digital embassy" with a full backup of the (digital) country. Even if the russians do invade or bring the system down it is a matter of switching to the digital embassy in Luxemburg.
Re: (Score:1)
Hmm, doesn't follow. Physical proximity doesn't help much with online attacks.
digital means... (Score:2)
.... like in digital anal exam.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Europe Checks (Score:2)
That is yet another reason why we do not use checks.
I think you'll find that a lot of people in Europe use plenty of checks when banking. However, cheques are becoming a lot rarer.
Re: (Score:2)
No: Europe Cheques (Score:2)
ease of business (Score:1)