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 like a DMV. You take a ticket and wait. The woman behind the counter asks some questions, for your passport, biometrics (photo and finger prints) and 50 euros. You then you wait to hear a response within two weeks.
An annoying part is that you have to show up again in two weeks to pick it up in person. Mine is still waiting for me in Estonia as I've not been back yet and I can't have a friend pick it up for me (it has to be me!).
Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore, which isn't bad as the prices are quite reasonable and the food is good.
You can write to the Estonian Police and Border Guard (teenindus@politsei.ee) and ask for your card to be sent (free of charge) from the police station where you applied to any Estonian embassy. My card was waiting in Tallinn as well since I don't have the time to go there again to collect the card in the next couple of months, so I had it sent to Berlin. Might take two or three weeks for it to arrive.
> Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore,
I'd recommend everyone visit Tallinn.
On a quick walk you can see a medieval castle, renaissance architecture, soviet architecture, and postmodern examples from the sprint west after Baltic independence. It's like a walking through a timeline of European history.
From the linked website, it seems that they expanded applications to overseas embassies a few days ago, so visiting in person might no longer be necessary.
Out of curiosity, what was your motivation for applying? It seems to me that the only obvious use-case for e-residency is to run a company registered in Estonia while living elsewhere.
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.
Estonia definitely is not Russia, but it is close to Russia.
So close that Estonian policeman Eston Kohver is on trial in Moscow; according to Estonians, he was abducted from Estonia where he was investigating cross-border crime; according to Russia he was spying in Russia. The border is not so clearly marked that outsiders could reliably prove what happened.
This resembles the case of Ukrainian female pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was arrested by Russian forces/proxies in Ukraine and is to go on trial in Moscow.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28249884
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.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin was a "real and present danger" to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and NATO was getting ready to repel any aggression, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said." [0]
"Michael Fallon, the British defense secretary, warned that there is a real and present danger that Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch a campaign of undercover attacks to destabilize the Baltic states, in an interview given to the Daily Telegraph. Estonian politicians said that there is a reason to be vigilant, but asked to avoid hysteria." [1]
While there is no imminent threat of attack, the Russian antagonism towards Baltic states has been very very evident to everybody since the Bronze Warrior clashes.
"According to historian Alexander Daniel, the Bronze Soldier has symbolic value to Estonia's Russians, symbolising not only Soviet victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, but also their claim to rights in Estonia.[18] Most Estonians considered the Bronze Soldier a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression following World War II.[19]" [2]
Seeing how Russian proxies and provocateurs make propaganda, a claim about Russian attempts to destabilize Baltic states is not bullshit at all.
You mean "some mass-media claims people in Baltics disagree with that".
I don't really want to interfere with all that information war of yours, but as a Baltic citizen I feel almost offended by generalizations like that. Most people I know (including myself) would strongly claim this is bullshit, and have ironically-scornful attitude towards journalists and politicians spreading all that hysteria you are referring to as "the sources". Of course here are people, who feel otherwise, but I have ironically-scornful attitude towards them as well.
There are at least enough Estonians who agree to elect a president who clearly does see a potential Russian threat.
Of course there are Baltic citizens who are not worried by Russia. There are hundreds of thousands of Baltic citizens who are ethnic Russians and do not want to be anything else, after all. And most people they know will be similar to themselves of course, because people on both sides of this ethnic divide live in ethnic bubbles. (Yes, again a generalization that does not apply to each and every person.)
But I would claim that a majority of Baltic citizens, particularly people of ethnically Baltic origin, are worried about Russia (and ethnic Russian minorities are not). At least that's what the election results look like.
What I'm gonna say is pretty harsh, but, you see, for a long time (almost as long, as I remember myself at all) I have a feeling that election results don't matter. Not because "majority makes a wrong choice", no. There's just no choice. Either you go in politics yourself or you say "fuck them" and try to make living being affected by all these guys on TV as less as possible. No difference what they say. What they will do when elected is of no use anyway. Where I live (Latvia) I remember 1 somewhat useful president and 0 useful premier ministers. For me they are just like weather or something: they are just there, I don't really pray God to protect me from bad weather, I build a house that will.
In fact, I've seen politicians who are making their image as pro-russian and ultra-anti-russian perfectly hanging out "after work" together, so I don't believe in their play a tiniest bit. Nor do all the rational people I know, of both russian and latvian origin. It's kinda obvious that this theater is oriented towards not-so-educated aggressive minorities in order to gather votes. Normal people just don't care. In fact, we don't care so much that jokes about "wish these effing russians would leave Latvia already!" are perfectly fine amongst our russian friends (which actually surprised me at first, because some 15 years ago people were a bit more radical here). I'm just tired of all this "latvian/russian" thing, I don't really understand what "nationality" or "origin" is anyways. The only "international matter"-thing that bothers me where I live is NATO-soldiers playing war on one of our polygons: you cannot imagine how much noise these bastards make!
Of course I don't really know how things are in Estonia as I don't live there all the time, but impression I've got from visiting and communicating with people who do live there isn't really much worse.
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.
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 :)
That's not true at all. Keskerakond does hold a lot of power (in Tallinn), but you're overdramatizing it way too much.
The reason why you're saying that there's "two political parties" is because Estonians' votes are spread out between 3-5 parties, whereas Russians only vote for 1 (Keskerakond). So yes, in the end, there's two main big parties (which is the same for a lot of countries), but saying that there's "basically 2 parties" is completely ignorant. Estonians' views are spread out, whereas Russians feel like they have to vote for Keskerakond to have at least some political power. Also to note, a lot of elderly Estonians also vote for Keskerakond (my grandparents for example), so Keskerakond is not just a Russian party.
From personal experience, the US has been fingerprinting non-US nationals at the airports for a decade now. So NSA has had such a database for a significant time. However, I still doubt they have figured out to hack the iPhone using said database. But this is just my personal opinion...
The worst aspect of the estonian ID-card is simply the fact that your private key is not private, and stored in the card itself. You as a user, can not revoke or resign it.
At the same time however, it holds full legal status and dominion over your identity.
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.
The Estonian voting system already allows you to verify your vote from a second device for a short time period.
This certainly doesn't protect against all attacks (and it's only one part of the security system) — but it _does_ help against the threat of a virus that invisibly intercepts your vote to turn it into something different. If people started reporting that their phone showed a different vote to what they thought they'd cast via their laptop, then the election would be in trouble.
The fact that it only shows you this for a short time period also gets around the problem of you being able to show to a third party how you voted (in cases of vote-buying or coercion), because under the Estonian system you can also vote as many times as you like (with only the final vote being counted). So you could use this verification to 'prove' to someone that you voted the way they wanted you to — and then log in again an hour later and vote for someone different.
But it also means that a virus that intercepts your PIN and your ID card can log in an hour later and vote for someone different. You then would have no way of knowing.
As I said, this particular approach isn't a solution to every potential problem.
However, I'm much less concerned with this threat than with the much simpler virus that simply changes your vote in real time.
Most people I know don't leave their ID card connected at all time; so the virus would need to wait for the next opportune moment, rather than silently casting this vote whilst you're not at my computer — thus significantly increasing the chances that at least some people would notice it. If it also had to load the voting software again to send the vote (I don't know enough about the protocols around this to know if it would have to or not), then it would be even more likely that some people would notice.
And on top of that, don't forget that the ID-card software shows on launch how many times you've digitally signed things. Most people almost certainly don't pay much attention to that number, but I'm sure some people would notice it rising unexpectedly from the virus, and an investigation could happen.
That was a very interesting video but I think you misrepresent it slightly. Its clear the Estonian E-voting system was designed very very well in comparison to the ridiculously bad Diabold machines of yesteryear. The problem was that the current state-of-the-art hasn't advanced enough to make major fraud at least as hard as the paper ballot. And that means that e-voting makes it plausible for state actors to dictate election results, which in a democracy is a very bad thing. In other words, there was no way Estonia could make it perfect and anything less than perfect is broken.
The important point for me was that getting e-voting right is so incredibly important to a democracy that it should be treated as a national security issue. The Estonian E-voting system was clearly treated as a government IT project as procedures like "don't plug in a personal USB stick into the master counting server" are violated if its more convenient than replacing the broken DVD drive. Worse, politics gets mixed in which means that security concerns are dismissed with complacent and technically questionable statements like "nice people who care about computer hygiene have no viruses".
Even without getting into complex election fraud, parties in many countries already know how to buy votes in a paper-ballot system: you simply offer a bottle of vodka for a cell-phone photo of the ballot marked the way you want.
And even without that, there's a much simpler calculation in play in Estonia. Keskerakond (the party closely allied with Putin's party), only got 7.7% of the e-votes in the most recent election: the demographics of online voters has very little overlap with their supporters. If only the paper-based votes were counted, Keskerakond would have won the election.
Sure, they'd still have the complication of actually forming a government; but it's much more likely they'd be able to do that with a first-place showing (and possibly without Savisaar).
With those sorts of numbers, if I were a Keskerakond strategist, I'd be doing everything I possibly could to discredit e-voting too. And the more "useful idiots" I could find, who'll merrily interfere in the elections a country they know very little about because it suits their own ideals, the better.
> you simply offer a bottle of vodka for a cell-phone photo of the ballot marked the way you want
you have to keep tens of thousands of people quiet for that to work without any suspicion at all. with e-voting you can commit major fraud without anyone noticing and with much much less evidence trail.
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.
I double that. Honestly, I expected that somebody already explained it in comments. Before reading so detailed and in-depth explanation on "how?" I would expect broad and self-selling explanation of "why?".
The program appears to be oriented towards people who regularly visit Estonia or do business with Estonians. The Estonian ID card is used for authentication to many (perhaps all) Estonian government services and some private services, so it would be inconvenient to e.g. owe taxes there and not have an Estonian e-ID.
It makes it easier to start a business, open a bank account, and things like that in Estonia. That's important because it's an EU country with a reasonable tax system, stable government and an overall ease of doing business. Being part of the EU makes a lot of things easier in dealings with other countries depending on your line of work.
That's the theory anyway. We'll see if it pans out.
Personally, it's an important step for me in getting a real residency beyond one tied to a company that isn't my own in the EU.
Estonia has little natural resources, a small population, an unstable neighbour and it is a bit at the periphery of Europe. They have invested a lot of effort into becoming strong in Internet. This is one example of those efforts.
Interesting, would it be possible to create a Google Play Store merchant account with this? Estonia is in the list of supported countries for merchants.
I couldn't find any obligations. Its probably a good idea to keep your PIN secure to reduce the probability of ID fraud. As far as I can tell its a state backed digital signature and authentication system so wouldn't confer any obligations.
However, there is some discussion about whether its a completely new legal status which would do things like make you liable for double taxation. Personally I find that highly unlikely, but IANAL, YMMV etc.
fyi, how to apply: 1.april Estonia opened foreign embassies where you can give paper application. But from May Estonia opens online application where you can pay by credit card. And once you got accepted then you need to physically go and collect the card from your chosen foreign embassy. everything here https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/
Why one should? yes, access to EU market, access to good services (google, paypal, soon stripe etc), access to e-banking, and generally digital signature gives hassle-free business environment (signing contracts with partners, filling e-tax declarations, administrating business on a business portal).
Why Estonia is doing it - to increase its economic reach / gain more customers / PR
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 like a DMV. You take a ticket and wait. The woman behind the counter asks some questions, for your passport, biometrics (photo and finger prints) and 50 euros. You then you wait to hear a response within two weeks.
An annoying part is that you have to show up again in two weeks to pick it up in person. Mine is still waiting for me in Estonia as I've not been back yet and I can't have a friend pick it up for me (it has to be me!).
Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore, which isn't bad as the prices are quite reasonable and the food is good.