Estonia to establish the world’s first data embassy in Luxembourg

I was browsing around and found this to be somewhat interesting. Estonia basically has back up its entire database of essential data on Luxembourg servers for security of continuity of government in the event of, well any event that would threaten such data I suppose.

Republic of Estonia
“This is the first data embassy in the world. Its establishment is part of the Estonian general strategy of data management and fundamentally a double guarantee to our data and services,” Ratas explained.

“A majority of daily open services of Estonia are digital. Data security and cyber security are generally crucial from the perspective of both people’s confidence and the functioning of services. It is also an important part of the so-called daily digital hygiene in increasingly digitising societies,” Ratas said.

According to the Prime Minister, Luxembourg has the technical capability to back up our data at a high security level in data embassies. “Estonia is the world’s first country that uses this method to double secure its digital consistency in close cooperation with Luxembourg,” Ratas said.

I am curious as to why call it an embassy though. This to me seems similar to when nations place their gold reserves in other nations vaults for security, except with data. Is this really a significant first though?? All this really is from my perspective is the government of Estonia backing up their data on foreign servers right? Maybe they think the Russians are going to pour over their border any day now

yea, its a slow day if I am talking about Estonia for any reason other than Russians pouring over the border.

Paper can be cheated and paper can be faked, but information in a register can't," says Taavi Kotka, the Estonian government's chief information officer and the man tasked with setting the IT agenda for the world's most digitally-advanced society. Citizens can vote in national elections, find businesses and register baby names online using an identity card and a PIN-enabled reader. Patient health records are secured by the blockchain while land records are timestamped and held on publicly accessible online registers.

Estonia has converted itself into binary code and, according to Kotka, other countries will soon be following its lead. "Digital countries will be a new normality some time soon," he says. If Estonia was somehow wiped off the map, by invasion or a natural disaster, its data and services would allow the functions of the state to reboot.

Wired.com - 'Land is so yesterday': e-residents and 'digital embassies' could replace country borders.

I read, then re-read, your OP. I didn't understand what was being presented. Judging by the responses, I'm not sure many did either! So here's some more info.

To keep his country's data and online infrastructure safe, Kotka is experimenting with "data embassies". Friendly countries would host servers housing Estonia’s critical data and applications and, in the event of an attack, the Estonian government could switch over to those external databases to keep the country running.

Kotka is currently in talks with friendly governments, including the UK, about installing Estonian data embassies on their territory. "We would like to put data embassies under the Vienna Convention," he says.

(same source)

The "he" and "Kotka," they are talking to is, Taavi Kotka, Estonia's CIO.

Aha! Basically he wants disaster recovery for Estonia! Each citizen can already access all of their government functions on-line. There is cyber security mentioned above but to keep from having all of Estonia's eggs in one basket, so to speak, he wants friendly countries to have a copy of their citizens data and government's applications to keep the bureaucracy rolling! LOL (couldn't help myself).

A "data embassy" is like a regular embassy in that it is the soil of that country. And he thinks it should abide by the Vienna Convention. Hum?

Crazy concept to think about. "Das papers!!" "Oh. I have dual e-citizen ship with USA and Oracle..." Because you know that corporations will want their own, loyal, subjects!

Think about it. The original "e-citizen" will be Estonian!!

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Que The Ministry of Information i imagine.

This world gets more Orwellian as the days grow shorter.

Why we feel the need to collect all this meta information and then subscribe such value that we require embassies to control and manipulate such is ridiculous and will be our inevitable downfall.

To many fingers in far to many pies.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
So it is basically a data center in another country, but like an exact copy of the Estonian government systems, with them having ultimate control over it??

Silly Estonian's, all your nations data has already been backed up by the NSA and their fusion centers
Ha, I probably have no idea what I am talking about. But the concept of a digital embassy sounded new and interesting to me.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

No, you're absolutely right that it's an interesting concept!

Think about it this way, should natural disasters coups or invasions occur Estonia's citizens will find it much easier to gain refuge in other countries because they will be known quantities!

Contrast with Syria lybia and Iraq where we really have no idea who most of the refugees coming from these places are!

The free, easy, and extremely stupid way refugees are being allowed into other nations is something that is not going to last much longer. It's already starting to swing the other direction, and this trend will rightfully accelerate over the next decade!

And FWIW this is not Orwellian in the slightest, nor is Estonia offering to give up control or even access to it's citizens data etc!

That's why they are specifically making this request under the auspice of the Vienna Convention which very clearly lays down a legal framework for embassies in foreign nations which have all the sanctity of a sovereign nation within their boundaries!

I very much wish people would actually read and take the time to understand things before they comment about them in ways that do nothing but indicate that they have poor reading comprehension and are too lazy to actually determine if their knee jerk reactions have any basis in facts.

They creating a business continuity plan..

Damn, I guess the drive in IT for security professionals is really no joke. The IT infrastructure for that kind of planning must be immense and costly.

Are they putting it on a closed network, air gaped potentially?

What if it is Luxembourg to get hit by Nukes rather than Estonia ?

I know .. I know ... they think Russian invasion is imminent ... But did the nazis think that US liberation was imminent right before they got bombed back to the stone age ?

a reply to: roguetechie

im with you on this, i mean what is the harm of keeping your countries data on a server somewhere in another country to protect it from what ever is going to happen in the future, # happens every now and then and when it happens and things get restored and when the country is back on its feet again then its easy restore those vital informations

@DrUAE That's true, but probably it's Estonian Waffen-SS oligarchs, who are not trying to store data in Luxembourg. Rather, they dream about a safe storage for their money, gold and loot from the former USSR. They probably look at Luxembourg as a possible candidate location.

Luxembourg's royals now allied of Salvini in an attempt to bring in criminal migrants in the EU, to then send them to the UK in order to commit acts of Arson and disorder ....

Under order of the Grand Duke , the Luxembourg armed forces are now tasked to conduct Eugenics research on children by torture and genetic manipulation to attempt to create the perfect Uebermensch mix of a African-Islamist "Master Race" ... to protect royalties from impending Judgement Day !

embassy is just a fancy way of saying they want redundancy built into there data

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Interesting idea, but IMO the data should be archived in a country outside of the EU, outside of Europe ... like Australia.

Dollars to doughnuts that other countries will look for ways to a) hack the data archived in Luxembourg, and b) find ways of leveraging Luxembourg to allow them physical access to the servers, etc.

Cheers

a reply to: Flanker86
Is that a true statement?? Do you have sources that can be posted here?? I would like to know more about the activities of the Luxembourg armed forces.

Is that good?