Comment by Katre | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Katre | Hacker News Reader

Hi everyone, this is Katre from the communications team in the e-Residency program. Thank you so much for your interest! We are proud to launch the first government-backed digital identity in the world. Here in Estonia, we view the e-Residency program as someting of a "governmental startup," and appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

We will soon redirect the HTTP page to HTTPS (thanks for catching that!). For now you can simply visit https://apply.e-estonia.com. We are also working to update the country lists.

After being approved as an e-Resident you are welcome to apply for a bank account and payment providers. As noted on the site, we are working on easier ways to facilitate this.

Benefits for US and global entrepreneurs include access to EU and European markets, and truly hassle-free online company administration. We are working on expanding services for individuals as well, which currently include two-factor authentication, document signing, and encryption.

Thank you again -- we are truly excited to launch this programme in open beta and welcome further questions at e-resident@gov.ee!

https://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2014/06/12/delfi-v-e...

http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-...

Sadly, rulings like this prevents a startup like Reddit, HN, or really anything that allows UGC from being practical via e-Estonia.

Best of luck tho.

Your application form has issues with č and ć characters which are in my last name.

I commend you on the approach and this is something I was very much looking forward to. However there are a couple of constraints that will prevent me (and I think other people) to apply:

- need to visit Estonia to open a bank account

- filing taxes with an accounting software in Estonian only

Solve those 2 issues and the only one left is the unavoidable double taxation complexity: you could try adding more information to the site about this subject, for example stating with which countries Estonia has currently established treaties to avoid double taxation.

Calling this e-Residency is a mistake. It's confusing enough that a commenter here was unsure if they were eligible because their country does not allow dual citizenship.

It's a government identity you can apply for and use online that allows you to register companies, among other things- right?

As an electronic resident of Estonia what are you entitled to that you can't do in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, etc? The only difference I can see is that in those places you likely need to visit the country to setup the company. Those countries certainly wouldn't call that process airplane-Residency.

Electronic mail is mail that you send electronically. Here, e-Residency is not residency in any definition of the word, even the ephemeral kind. An e-Residency does not afford the bearer any entitlements not offered to a non-bearer, save for not requiring a flight to Estonia.

That said, I appreciate the innovation in an online government ID card for foreigners. The name is a mistake. More accurate would be to call it e-Airplane.

As I haven't read everything about this, I'm willing to admit there's a chance I'm wrong.

Residency in the usual sense isn't the same thing as citizenship -- lots of people are citizens of one country and residents of another.

And while the initial set of benefits don't seem a lot like residency (except insofar as being eligible for a digital ID of this type -- in countries that offer them -- is, itself, typically something that requires citizenship or residency, so in a sense calling the program that provides access to it to non-citizen non-physical-residents "e-residency" may be reasonable on that basis alone), its overtly an initial "beta" set with planned expansion.

I'm aware of the difference between residency and citizenship, that's not the issue. I deny what they are offering is typically something requiring residency. Anecdotally- I don't have residency (or citizenship to be clear) in Singapore but have government ID there I use for their services.

If they plan to expand the program to allow things typically afforded to residents of a country then that would be something. I doubt it however.

This is a great thing and I filled the form out in about 2 minutes. Upon payment your payment processor redirects to:

"https://apply.e-estonia.comhttps//apply.e-estonia.com/feedba...

Which is obviously broken. I got an email confirming I paid and so far nothing else.

Czechoslovakia in the list of countries? It dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Please fix it.

Even then, I don't see why they couldn't ask whether you were born there.

It is under citizenship, not country of birth.

They certainly could, but they don't - there is neither Czechoslovakia nor the Czech Republic in the 'country of birth' selector. However, Czechoslovakia is incorrectly present in both 'citizenship' and 'contact information/country' selectors.

The e-Residency sounds interesting.

What exactly do you mean with "the first government-backed digital identity"? The German Identity card, for example, can be used for online authentication and it can store a digital signature on its chip. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card#Chip ]

Katre left out a key word: per their About page, it's the first transnational digital identity available to anyone in the world. German ID cards are only for physical residents of Germany.

> German ID cards are only for physical residents of Germany.

No. If you're a German citizen you can get a German ID card, even if you never set foot in Germany. See for instance http://www.brasil.diplo.de/Vertretung/brasilien/pt/Konsulars... (in Portuguese, instructions on how to get a German ID card for Brazilian residents).

That's probably correct, but Estonia's point is theirs is the first that requires neither citizenship nor physical residency.

When I get to the payment page, part of the text is in Estonian (apply.e-estonia.com, Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet Pärnu mnt 139,Tallinn).

Will I be able to register a *.ee domain name?

You don't have a consulate in California? Pick up locations in US are not very convenient for half of the country.

Not sure I want to apply for an identity document via a form that says "Oh snap!" to report errors...

The current functionality of this offer is 1) deal with Estonian government (not that useful for most of us) and 2) presenting that the Estonian government has confirmed your real-life identity and provided you with means of forwarding this confirmation (the keys). Functionality 2 is a bit undermined when people don't take the Estonian government seriously. As they might when a rather important form isn't on HTTPS, or when an error message is "Oh snap".

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