Live data from Hacker News

Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

e-estonia.com

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#11

I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did: The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things. It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just l…

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#12
post #11

I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did: The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things. It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just l…

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

Russian is the big bad and is trying to control you! /s

Estonia is not Russia, not even close, they're part of the EU and constrained by EU law.

Just because people in parliment are of russian descent does not make them pro-russia either. Stop being so racist.

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#13
post #12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

Russian is the big bad and is trying to control you! /s Estonia is not Russia, not even close, they're part of the EU and constrained by EU law. Just because people in parliment are of russian descent does not make them pro-russia either. Stop being so racist.

Dijit, i'm not being racist here. I'm being political here. Russia having a "claim" on the baltic states is a public secret. Russia trying to subvert and destabilize the baltic states is publically known as well. Regarding your EU statements, have you read the offical opinion of the EU on Russia ? It's a THREAT to the European Union, especially regarding the baltic member states. However, the documents also note that Russian maffia connected to the Kremlin also has french mayors on their payroll. Please don't underestimate the geopolitical aspect of this topic. And certainly, don't downplay political arguments as "racism", because that's not what this is about.

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#15
I thought of a simple solution to the verifiability problem, what do you think ?

- When voting, each voter receive a receipt with a random number assigned to his vote

- All the votes are published with the random numbers alongside them

- Each voter can verify that his vote was correctly saved by looking at his assigned number in the list

It's not perfect but relying on a central server is far worse I think (like the paper said)

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#16
post #11

I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did: The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things. It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just l…

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

I'm not too worried about identity theft due to simply having an e-residency. That seems like quite a stretch. Russians in Estonia have an interesting recent history but as far as I understand it, a lot can't even vote in national or EU elections. If anything Russian residents hold too little power over the country they call home.

Also according to Estonia's own population estimates, Tallinn is made up predominantly of Estonians (53%) but there is a large Russian minority (38%). Of course you could argue that they aren't registered as residents but from personal experience the stats seem quite accurate.

Source: http://www.tallinn.ee/est/ettevotjale/g2606s61115

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#17
post #15

I thought of a simple solution to the verifiability problem, what do you think ? - When voting, each voter receive a receipt with a random number assigned to his vote - All the votes are published with the random numbers alongside them - Each voter can verify that his vote was correctly saved by looking at his assigned number in the list It's not perfect but relying on a central server is far worse I think (like the…

At the very least the voter would need to supply the random number.

Otherwise the server can lump together several voters who voted for the same option.

I don't know offhand how Debian is doing it, but they've got some mechanism like that for their ballots. Since it's been around forever I'd guess it's solid.

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

I'm not too worried about identity theft due to simply having an e-residency. That seems like quite a stretch. Russians in Estonia have an interesting recent history but as far as I understand it, a lot can't even vote in national or EU elections. If anything Russian residents hold too little power over the country they call home. Also according to Estonia's own population estimates, Tallinn is made up predominantly…

There is basically two political parties in Estonia. A russian one, and a Estonian one. The capital, where most people live is politically dominated by Russians. I just invited some Estonian friends that campaign against the ID-Card and E-voting system to respond in this thread :)

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#19
post #11

I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did: The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things. It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just l…

Congratulations, between now and whenever the Kremlin feels like it, a foreign entity now controls your identity and can create legally binding contracts in your name. Never forget that 70%> of the people living in Talinn are non-estonians, and mostly Russian. And gues what: They hold power over half of their parliament.

You are either completely ignorant of the situation in Estonia or deliberately spreading misinformation. A simple check on Wikipedia would show you that the majority of people in Tallinn are Estonians (with Russians being 37% of Tallinn's population). In the parliament, Keskerakond, which is the only party which could be called pro-Kremlin (and even that is a pretty big stretch), only has 27/101 seats and is not in the government.

Re: Estonia's e-residency program expands abroad

#20
post #15

I thought of a simple solution to the verifiability problem, what do you think ? - When voting, each voter receive a receipt with a random number assigned to his vote - All the votes are published with the random numbers alongside them - Each voter can verify that his vote was correctly saved by looking at his assigned number in the list It's not perfect but relying on a central server is far worse I think (like the…

Unfortunately this enables someone to coerce or bribe you into voting for a certain candidate, since the coercer would be able to demand to see your receipt and verify you complied.

Here's a rather long but very interesting tech talk about electronic voting schemes which maintain the secret ballot property: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s

Post reply on HN