E-Residency in Estonia, Part I

Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by occamrazor on Monday December 07, 2015 @04:19PM (#10692801)

In every EU country digital signatures have the same validity as physical signatures since a long time (Directive 1999/93/EC). Most company filings are submitted electronically. Every state keeps a list of certified identification providers, which are mutually recognised. This list usually includes some government agencies, the national post service, sometimes banks, professional associations, chambers of commerce, and other private providers. The identification device is either a smartcard or an RSA dongle. The smartcard can be also used as PKI certificate for remote logine, S/MIME signatures, etc.

What is so special about the Estonian programme?

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by DanBC on Monday December 07, 2015 @04:27PM (#10692835)

> What is so special about the Estonian programme?

They actually use it.

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by gozo on Monday December 07, 2015 @06:17PM (#10693537)

They've had this in Sweden for like 10 years. It's all pretty clunky, even though you can now use an app instead. You generally have to have your card, then some plug-in, then the host have to implement the whole thing. Usually signing things isn't the whole story either, so you still have to deal with e.g. payments.

The Estonian system is probably better, since it's newer, but the challenge isn't really in handing out cards. It's standardizing authentication on the Internet and connecting that to whatever else matters.

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by zutnop on Monday December 07, 2015 @07:31PM (#10693941)

That's the trick, all Estonian government services + all private services which benefit from strong authentication or authorization have implemented the ID-card log in and signature functionality to their services/apps/websites.

So whether I send 5€ to my mother, or I sell my car to a stranger on other side of the country, or I submit my yearly tax data, or I complete my 1 000 000 € M&A deal, I use my digital identity (PKI infrastructure) to sign the transaction.

The physical ID-card itself is not the most user friendly token in this Estonian infrastructure (requires the reader + op system drivers/soft). The alternative token is Mobile-ID, where the same PKI infrastructure is deployed onto my phone SIM card and I use my mobile device to authenticate / authorize my transactions. At the moment this only works with certified Estonian carriers but in 2016 the next generation of mobile support should make this channel usable over the whole world.

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by gozo on Monday December 07, 2015 @08:06PM (#10694080)

Don't get me wrong that's all good and well, but it's still 15 year old technology being implemented and not a paradigm shift. Most of the time you're still going to be typing in your e-mail, postal address and credit card number when doing things online. It's not like you swipe your card once for logging in to you computer and then when buying some service online to verify the setting up a subscription payment and having all your data at the provider encrypted with your identity.

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by Tankenstein on Monday December 07, 2015 @05:07PM (#10693099)

Signing anything in Estonia (at least in tech, where i work), is always done digitally.

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by occamrazor on Monday December 07, 2015 @05:37PM (#10693328)

Is it also common for B2C or person to person transactions?

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Re:E-Residency in Estonia, Part I by ddon on Monday December 07, 2015 @05:42PM (#10693353)

Yes... everybody is using ID-cards here to sign docs and to sign-in online.

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