One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting.
That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing it and being 'first'. Though big thumbs up for e-citizenship.
IMHO, Baltic states are in the forefront of IT technologies. 3G works almost anywhere, 4G in cities. Internet is cheap and super fast (if you do not have 100Mbps connection - you have slow internet connection). You do your taxes, get your doctor appointments using internet and so on, for a very long time (since 2010 at least). All Baltic states have prominent startups, though Estonians where first to sell startup for big bucks (Skype).
I agree with you but also believe e-voting undermines the integrity of the democratic system as a whole, black-box or not.
How it currently works where I live is that, at the start of election day, all the volunteers and officials who are working for the day are allowed to inspect the urn, check for hidden compartments, and so on to ensure it's empty (And anyone can sign up to volunteer). Then they receive and place the votes in the urn together, and it remains sealed until the counting commences.
This creates a transparency that is simply not possible with an electronic solution. Even if it was possible to go through all software and hardware being deployed (A project which by itself would take years and cost millions), and the problem of being able to cast anonymous votes without the possibility of anyone finding out what you voted for was solved, you still hand over the democratic control of the election process to a small technological elite who will be doing these checks, while you gain very little from actually doing so.
Denmark tried to put an e-voting system in place a few years back but failed because one of the parties that was intially in favor where swayed by an angry group consisting in large part made up of computer science professionals and students.
It's not a "little critique", we're basically talking about abandoning the fundamental principles of a functioning democracy here.
If such an election was monitored by international observers, the way we often do with third world countries, the report could be summarised as "probably completely fraudulent, because we weren't allowed to verify anything".
E-voting is election fraud. Period.
Elections should be transparent and verifiable, and every voter should to cast their vote protected from outside interference (i.e., alone and unobserved in a voting booth). These things are not optional.
While things described in the second paragraph are true, calling Baltic States as being at the forefront of IT tech is a bit of a stretch.
Except for Estonia (Estonia actually doesn't like to be associated that much with Baltics, their mentality is more in line with their northern neighbors.), governments here don't really know how to approach IT. They're just as much out of touch with modern technologies as US gov. It's quite chaotic and unregulated. Plus, silly amounts of corruption.
And the regulations that they do impose end up hurting the countries instead of helping them.
Plus, we are tiny countries (population-wise) that have 2nd world living standards. Not many people can afford to start startups.
Which part of it would you consider a black box? The protocols are open (you can write your own voting application), the source code is largely open, there are numerous reports on it, you are most welcome to become an observer (and many do) etc. An informed critique of the system would actually be very welcome, just stating "random guys with flash drives are bad" is not that helpful
I agree, the e-voting technology should be a lot more secure, but as long as they keep improving it, I don't see it as too big of a problem, but if they used the same technology in the states for example, I would be pretty worried. The influence Estonia has in the world is negligible compared the US, so if something was to go wrong, sure, it would be pretty bad, but compared to the same happening in a more influencial country, it would be pretty minor.
In many countries and places this strategy of "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true" would work well. USA, India are not one of those places.
All the mainstream media reports on such topics and especially technology should be taken with a boatload of salt.
e-voting (and postal voting) is also terrible because it allows easy coercion of the voter. You can't control the environment elsewhere. In a real polling station, at least nobody else gets to sit next to the voter to make sure they vote the right way.
what about verifiable mix-net voting?
wouldn't mix-net voting prevent from such things in the first place? if not, why/how?
(*I'm learning about these stuff, and I want to know your opinions on them...)
Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking”
This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?
True but it's a first step. They don't master the technology, once they use it, what should and can be 'refactored' will probably be. Right now they're still thinking through their last medium.
Saw this for national websites (tax, jobs), first version was heavy Java front and backend, complex, slow, full of requirements. Recently it was simplified (a little, sometimes a lot).
Estonians are everywhere - that's why they're successful. Everywhere I was in an accelerator, reporters and people from Estonia came in order to learn how things are done - this is a long and deliberate process.
LOL, you got this all wrong. The government is pushing technology quite hard on Estonians (for a variety of justified reasons) THAT's why you see many Estonian teams floating around.
"In many cases, the companies that received government money were being run by people with no experience in the field. We wrote about an incubator for gaming startups, where none of the people running the incubator had ever worked in the gaming industry! Then there was the incubator that received nearly 700,000 euros from the government to set up in a small town of 20,000 people to promote creative arts startups, which as far as we can tell was just a few women making dresses and jewelry."
It's just like the lean startup process. In Finland and especially in Sweden, things are talked being talked about for years or decades. We need to plan, think, prepare, study, blah blah, whatever.
You know what? Meanwhile Estonians did it, actually several years ago. Skipping (or doing really leanly) most of these major time and resource wasters.
> The politicians and senior bureaucrats had not caught oil fever. A serious mining accident had recently brought down a government, and most did not want to touch oil matters with a bargepole. “Everything I said was met with, ‘Oh, you think so? Mmm. Maybe. Let’s wait and see’,” al-Kasim recalls. “This characteristic saved Norway from the curse of oil: the fact that they are completely incapable of getting carried away by the oil dream. They were very sceptical – plain horse sense basically. They didn’t want to move until it was absolutely proven that it was the right time to act.”
first time Estonia was on my radar was in 1998 on a Linux Conference in Singapore. The number of companies present from a small country like Estonia was astonishing. They have come a long way since and really know how to foster entrepreneurship and the local tech community. A lot of governments (sigh France) could learn from their hands-off approach.
@trymas/ "IMHO, Baltic states are in the forefront of IT technologies." <- I can only agree that they are in the forefront of using IT, not producing anything noticeable, with rare exceptions like Skype messenger, MikroTik routers and FlyZip algorhythm.
It looks like you are the victim of some scapegoating discourse - it's very easy for corrupt politicians and other malicious interest groups to divert the public's attention from the real issues by turning some minority or loosely defined external force into "the enemy/the source of all our problems".
Here in Bulgaria, every public problem is either due to Russia's evil influence, or the US's evil influence, or the gypsies or the Turkish minority, or even sometimes the EU, but somehow the problems never seem to be caused by institutionalized corruption on a massive scale. Of course, we - the citizens - are also to blame for letting our government fall into the hands of private interests... Sadly, we haven't yet found a way to move forward like the Estonians.
This is stupid, and wrong. I worked several years in Estonia (at Skype) and I would say that more than 50% of programmers are from foreign countries. Mainly russia, but also Ukraine, latvia, Czech republic...
In Tallin, half the population is Russian, or native russian speaker.
[+] [-] trymas|10 years ago|reply
That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing it and being 'first'. Though big thumbs up for e-citizenship.
IMHO, Baltic states are in the forefront of IT technologies. 3G works almost anywhere, 4G in cities. Internet is cheap and super fast (if you do not have 100Mbps connection - you have slow internet connection). You do your taxes, get your doctor appointments using internet and so on, for a very long time (since 2010 at least). All Baltic states have prominent startups, though Estonians where first to sell startup for big bucks (Skype).
[+] [-] OlleTO|10 years ago|reply
How it currently works where I live is that, at the start of election day, all the volunteers and officials who are working for the day are allowed to inspect the urn, check for hidden compartments, and so on to ensure it's empty (And anyone can sign up to volunteer). Then they receive and place the votes in the urn together, and it remains sealed until the counting commences.
This creates a transparency that is simply not possible with an electronic solution. Even if it was possible to go through all software and hardware being deployed (A project which by itself would take years and cost millions), and the problem of being able to cast anonymous votes without the possibility of anyone finding out what you voted for was solved, you still hand over the democratic control of the election process to a small technological elite who will be doing these checks, while you gain very little from actually doing so.
Denmark tried to put an e-voting system in place a few years back but failed because one of the parties that was intially in favor where swayed by an angry group consisting in large part made up of computer science professionals and students.
[+] [-] mvanvoorden|10 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes...
[+] [-] makeitsuckless|10 years ago|reply
If such an election was monitored by international observers, the way we often do with third world countries, the report could be summarised as "probably completely fraudulent, because we weren't allowed to verify anything".
E-voting is election fraud. Period.
Elections should be transparent and verifiable, and every voter should to cast their vote protected from outside interference (i.e., alone and unobserved in a voting booth). These things are not optional.
[+] [-] thekodols|10 years ago|reply
Except for Estonia (Estonia actually doesn't like to be associated that much with Baltics, their mentality is more in line with their northern neighbors.), governments here don't really know how to approach IT. They're just as much out of touch with modern technologies as US gov. It's quite chaotic and unregulated. Plus, silly amounts of corruption.
And the regulations that they do impose end up hurting the countries instead of helping them.
Plus, we are tiny countries (population-wise) that have 2nd world living standards. Not many people can afford to start startups.
[+] [-] belZaah|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kymps|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|10 years ago|reply
All the mainstream media reports on such topics and especially technology should be taken with a boatload of salt.
[+] [-] xioxox|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devdoomari|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hornbill|10 years ago|reply
This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|10 years ago|reply
what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
Saw this for national websites (tax, jobs), first version was heavy Java front and backend, complex, slow, full of requirements. Recently it was simplified (a little, sometimes a lot).
[+] [-] inglor|10 years ago|reply
Once an Estonian journalist even wrote about our company - was fun! http://majandus24.postimees.ee/2080692/iisraeli-poisid-leiut...
Other countries in the area (namely Finland) also do this and fly around - we've had teams from Italy come visit us in Tel Aviv and other countries.
I can only imagine how it feels in the valley and how much visits you get.
[+] [-] atmosx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanhoe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dear|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|10 years ago|reply
Also, how has Estonia as a country benefited from this so far? The GDP/person seems to be stalling , although generally growing fast since the 00s. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD/countries...
[+] [-] Sami_Lehtinen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnchristopher|10 years ago|reply
> The politicians and senior bureaucrats had not caught oil fever. A serious mining accident had recently brought down a government, and most did not want to touch oil matters with a bargepole. “Everything I said was met with, ‘Oh, you think so? Mmm. Maybe. Let’s wait and see’,” al-Kasim recalls. “This characteristic saved Norway from the curse of oil: the fact that they are completely incapable of getting carried away by the oil dream. They were very sceptical – plain horse sense basically. They didn’t want to move until it was absolutely proven that it was the right time to act.”
[+] [-] ido|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ommunist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igravious|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flatfilefan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolgirl43|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] shumo|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lubonay|10 years ago|reply
Here in Bulgaria, every public problem is either due to Russia's evil influence, or the US's evil influence, or the gypsies or the Turkish minority, or even sometimes the EU, but somehow the problems never seem to be caused by institutionalized corruption on a massive scale. Of course, we - the citizens - are also to blame for letting our government fall into the hands of private interests... Sadly, we haven't yet found a way to move forward like the Estonians.
[+] [-] Galanwe|10 years ago|reply
In Tallin, half the population is Russian, or native russian speaker.
[+] [-] ido|10 years ago|reply
Wikipedia says 1/4 of Estonians are Russian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia#Demographics
[+] [-] smcl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkot|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dullgiulio|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belZaah|10 years ago|reply