[kictanet] Great story on Estonia as an Internet nation

[Paul Kukubo]

In 1995, four years after Estonia
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/estonia> broke
free from the USSR, Toomas Hendrik Ilves read a "very Luddite" book by
Jeremy Rifkin called The End of Work. "It argued that with greater
computerisation there would be fewer jobs," remembered Ilves, then a senior
diplomat, now the country's
president<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/president-ilves-made-estonia>,
"which from his point of view was terrible."

Ilves and many of his colleagues saw it differently. In a tiny (population:
1.4 million) and newly independent country like Estonia, politicians
realised computers could help quickly compensate for both a minuscule
workforce and a chronic lack of physical infrastructure.

Seventeen years on, the
internet<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet> has
done more than just help. It is now tightly entwined with Estonia's
identity. "For other countries, the internet is just another service, like
tap water, or clean streets," said Linnar Viik, a lecturer at the Estonian
IT College, a government adviser and a man almost synonymous in Estonia
with the rise of the
web<http://www.eubusiness.com/europe/estonia/040420021538.qhs3vusx>
.

"But for young Estonians, the internet is a manifestation of something more
than a service – it's a symbol of democracy and freedom."

To see why, you just have to go outside. Free
Wi-Fi<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/wifi> is
everywhere, and has been for a decade.

Viik says you could walk 100 miles – from the pastel-coloured turrets here
in medieval Tallinn <http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/tallinn> to the
university spires of Tartu – and never lose internet connection.

"We realised that if the government was going to use the internet, the
internet had to be available to everybody," Viik said. "So we built a huge
network of public internet access points for people who couldn't afford
them at home."

The country took a similar approach to education. By 1997, thanks to a
campaign led in part by Ilves, a staggering 97% of Estonian schools already
had internet <http://www.tiigrihype.ee/?op=body&id=45>. Now 42 Estonian
services are now managed mainly through the internet. Last year, 94% of tax
returns were made online, usually within five minutes. You can vote on your
laptop <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6407269.stm> (at the last
election, Ilves did it from Macedonia) and sign legal documents on a
smartphone. Cabinet meetings have been paperless since 2000.

Doctors only issue prescriptions electronically, while in the main cities
you can pay by text for bus tickets, parking, and – in some cases – a pint
of beer. Not bad for country where, two decades ago, half the population
had no phone line <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3603943.stm>.

Central to the Estonian project is the ID card, introduced in 2002. Nine in
10 Estonians have one, and – by slotting it into their computer – citizens
can use their card to vote online, transfer money and access all the
information the state has on them.

"There's nothing on the ID card itself, because that could be dangerous if
you lost it," says Katrin Pärgmäe, who is in charge of public awareness at
RIA, the country's internet authority <http://www.ria.ee/en>.

"It only gives you access to the database if you type in the right code."

You can also present the card at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. On
public transport, it doubles as a ticket.

Many people also have special ID chips on their mobile sim cards that allow
them to pay people by text.

To a British audience, the ID card will have a whiff of Big Brother. But
many Estonians argue the opposite: that it allows them to keep tabs on the
state, rather than the other way round.

"You'd think, given our history, we'd have a problem with it," said Ilves,
in an oblique reference to the days when the KGB had an office down a
cobbled street in central Tallinn.

"But I feel much more secure with a digital ID. If anyone goes into my
files, they're flagged. Whereas if my files – which would exist anyway –
were made of paper, no one would know who was looking at them."

Every Estonian can see who has visited their data, and they can challenge
any suspicious behaviour. In one famous case, a policewoman was caught
accessing information about her boyfriend.

During a recent election campaign, a candidate was swiftly punished for
accessing personal information about would-be constituents. "I don't know
what the idiot was thinking," said Viik. "You can't hide."

To an outsider, it is not immediately clear why Estonia took to the
internet so much faster than its Baltic cousins, Latvia and Lithuania. All
three won independence at the same time. All three needed quick ways of
revamping their ailing infrastructure. But to Estonians, the reason is
simple. Estonia has a sizeable Russian-speaking minority, but the country's
ethnic Estonian majority feel Nordic, rather than Slavic or eastern
European. In the early 90s, this meant they looked to tech-happy
Scandinavia for both inspiration and investment.

Those Finnish and Swedish businesses that did invest expected their
Estonian counterparts to communicate by email rather than fax.

And pretty soon it was the newcomers who were leading the way.

"I remember when one of our banks was bought by a Swedish one, they came
over and said: 'And now we're going to teach you how to do computer
banking'," recalled Ilves. "And we said, 'well, you might want to look at
what we're actually doing with computer banking ourselves.'" At the last
count, 99% of Estonian bank transfers were online.

It helped that many politicians in the early 90s were unusually quick to
"get" the internet. "The people in power after the collapse of the Soviet
Union were really young," said Jaan Tallinn, the co-founder of Skype, the
Estonian internet telephone company, and a co-developer of file-sharingwebsite
Kazaa <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/www.kazaa.com>.
"They knew what was going on."

Mart Laar was 32 when he became prime minister in 1992. Ilves is slightly
older, but had learned to code as a child, growing up in exile in the US.

"I thought if I can do it, anyone can," he said in his strong New Jersey
accent. "I was completely at ease with computers."

The internet was also seen as a buffer to
Russia<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia>
.

"We were afraid that Russian armies might take down the TV tower, the
central radio station, or newspaper press," said Viik.

"Three addresses shut down, and we would have been disconnected from the
rest of the world.

"But the internet would still work – and so we realised that this would be
a great way of keeping in touch with the world in case of emergency."

Ironically, when an attack did finally come, it came via the internet – and
promptly disconnected Estonia from the rest of the world.

In 2007, the government infuriated its Russian-speaking minority by moving
a Soviet war memorial from central Tallinn to a cemetery on the city's
outskirts. Violence flared on the streets, and later reached the internet.
The first cyberattack was simplistic, and easily dealt with: thousands of
unknown individuals bombarding government, media and banking websites with
"denial of service" (DoS) attacks.

"It was like an internet riot," said Hillar Aarelaid, who led Estonia's
response, at the time.

But what started as an emotional backlash soon became a far larger, longer
and better co-ordinated assault on Estonia's very being.

It lasted three weeks and could only be contained by restricting internet
traffic in and out of the country. It was, in effect, a cybersiege.

"This is how a lot of myths were created," remembered Pärgmäe. "Those
outside the country couldn't access Estonian websites, but they didn't
realise that people inside still could."

Rumours circulated about the collapse of the Estonian online banking
system, and how people were struggling to buy groceries. "But actually the
longest downtime for a bank's website was just one and a half hours."

The debacle had two positive effects. First: Nato founded a cyberwarfare
thinktank in Estonia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Cyber_Defence_Centre_of_Excellence>,
to learn from the experience. Second: the government set up the Cyber
Defence League<https://www.eesti.ee/eng/riigikaitse/eesti_kaitsejoud/kaitsevagi>,
a network of 100 volunteers from the cybersector who, among other roles,
will form – a kind of territorial army during future strife.

"Traditionally in western countries," said Ilves, "you've had a
weekend-warrior thing where volunteers run off into the woods and do target
practice. In Estonia, we have a unit of IT people from banks, software
companies who in their spare time for one day a week work on cyber issues."

This kind of collaboration between private and public sectors was also
central to Estonian innovation in the 90s, Viik claims.

"The government started several IT programmes as a catalyst," he said. "But
only in a few was it the main sponsor. From the early days, government
philosophy was not to hire programmers, but to use the services of private
companies, which in turn increased the competitiveness of the Estonian IT
sector."

Case in point: the ID card. "It's private companies who developed and
manage the service – and who can now export their new-found competencies to
other countries."

Viik argues that this benefits both the private sector and the state, who
otherwise would not have the resources for ID card technology.

But some think the overlap between occasionally threatens Estonia's open
internet.

For many years, each Estonian citizen had the right to a free domain name.
As in the UK, they could not register top-level domain names – but they
could bag a ".pri.ee" site, similar to a ".co.uk" site in Britain. In 2010,
that changed: the government outsourced the responsibility of allocating
domain names to private registrars. The pri.ee domains were abolished, and
individuals were instead given the right to top-level ".ee" websites. The
only catch was a £15 price-tag – one of the highest rates in
Europe<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news>
.

Many academics and high-profile techies were
outraged<http://kogukond.org/in-english/>,
and some founded a pressure group – the Estonian Internet Community (EIC) –
that campaigns to give ordinary citizens more of a say in how Estonia's
internet is run. After public outcry, a new set of free domain-names -
era.ee - were introduced.

More generally, it is feared that the same politicians who had such
enlightened attitudes to the internet in the 90s may be starting to lose
their progressive edge.

"They're still in power," said Jaan Tallinn, "but I'm not sure they still
understand what's going on. Technology keeps progressing. Young people
follow the curve. But as they get older they get inertia, and they start
deviating from that curve."

Ilves himself is fairly critical of parts of
Acta<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement>,
the hugely controversial international agreement that opponents fear will
curtail the rights of individual internet users.

But there is a perception that other politicians could be doing more to
oppose its introduction.

"It's difficult because it's actually an EU agreement," admitted Jaagup
Irve, a PhD student at the Tallinn University of Technology, and an EIC
board member. "But the government isn't doing enough to stop
Acta<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/acta>
."

Viik says that among politicians of all stripes there has always been "a
silent consensus" about the importance of the internet. For many years,
Estonians could expect whomever they elected to have the best interests of
the internet at heart.

But Irve thinks the public can no longer be so complacent. "People think a
government is like a smart missile: the thing practically flies itself," he
argued.

"But today it's more like a bomb that we have to guide. We have to guide
the government, and that's what the internet society has woken up to."

*• Explore the seven-day special series on the Battle for the
internet<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/battle-for-the-internet>
*

• This article was amended on 17 April 2012 to clarify details of the
registration and selling of domain names.


-- 
Paul Kukubo
Chief Executive Officer, Kenya ICT Board
PO Box 27150 - 00100
Nairobi, Kenya

12th Floor, Teleposta Towers Koinange Street

Tel +254 20 2089061, +254 20 2211960
Fax: +254 20 2211962
website: www.ict.go.ke
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twitter:@tandaaKENYA
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personal contacts
_______________

Cell: + 254 717 180001


skype: kukubopaul
googletalk: pkukubo
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personal twitter: @pkukubo


____________________
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