Nothing to do with Snowden revelations, but with RSA prime number generation. Because of a bug on the chip, primes were generated starting from numbers divisble by ten, which are way rarer than those divisble by two (pardon the extreme simplification.)

That's a hardware design error. The claim is that Gemalto failed to fullfil the contractual clauses about quickly informing the customer (the Estonian state) of the security breach, not the existance of the security breach itself.

The article stipulates that the contract dates back until 2002, about 11 years before the Snowden allegations came to light. So while they could have switched afterwards, the contract may have had a longer contract period, locking them in for a while. You also can’t just switch the identity provider for your national ID system, such a move would need at least some lead time.

Exactly, this crazy to think you can keep you sovereignty while giving to a foreign (French), NSA/CIA infiltrated (In-Q-Tel/Snowden) company the keys to all your citizens ID, moreover with internet voting. While ahead of its time, maximum caution must be taken, and the balance must be made between convenience and independence.

The problem is mandatory blind trust in single entity, be it Gemalto or Oberthur or NSA^H^HIST. Same issue with CA-s.

Gemalto issues all of Sweden's forms of state ID right now, the NSA must be laughing.

Gemalto is french.