Estonia has invited people to register as e-residents - a step towards a world where a person’s identity online matters just as much as their identity offline 
 
 ESTONIA flung open its digital borders last week. The eastern European country invited anyone, anywhere, to open a bank account or start a business. By the end of the year, anyone with an internet connection will be able to live their financial life in Estonia, all without being physically present. 
 
 Such e-residency, as it is known, is a step towards a world where a person's online identity matters just as much as their offline identity; where the location of data, rather than documents, is more important. 
 
 "This is the beginning of the erosion of the classic nation state hegemony ," says John Clippinger, a digital identity researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's going to get whittled away from the margins." 
 
 Max Ischenko – a Ukrainian entrepreneur who runs a job site called Djinni – is signing up. "It's very complicated to do business from Ukraine," he says. "For instance, I can't sign up for Paypal Business payments, because it's not available." 
 
 Crucially, Estonia offers firms a foothold in the European Union single market. Taavi Kotka, the Estonian government's chief information officer, says they are aiming to have 10 million non-Estonian e-residents signed up by 2025. More than 4000 are already lining up. 
 
 Getting e-residency in Estonia will require going there to have your identity verified – and fingerprints and face biometrics taken by border police. But Kotka says they are working on letting people sign up at Estonian embassies. For Estonia, embassies will no longer just be about extending the country's physical presence into other countries – but about extending their digital reach too. 
 
 E-residents don't get citizenship in the traditional sense – they can't apply for passports and visas, or vote in elections. But Kotka acknowledges that if all goes as planned, the new cohort of e-Estonians will have to have a say in any future changes to the country's corporate tax structures, for instance, and perhaps more. 
 
 "Imagine that thanks to e-residency we have 100,000 new companies. That means we have more companies run by e-residents than by people physically in Estonia," says Kotka. It makes sense that e-citizens should have a say if the government wants to change tax laws, for example. 
 
 Estonia already has the world's most advanced internet voting system – votes were cast online by Estonians living in 98 different countries in elections earlier this spring. Kotka says they could easily extend the system to let e-residents vote from anywhere in the world. 
 
 Clippinger thinks Estonia's move will create a market in which countries compete for digital citizenry. More flexible rules on starting businesses around the world may open the door to more fluid livelihoods – our homes may be in one country while our job and bank accounts are in another. This is already happening to an extent, but programmes like Estonia's promise to accelerate the trend. 
 
 Nor is it all business. "Given where things are going with the US National Security Agency, backdoors and control over personal data, I think this could be a starting point for people who don't trust their own governments," Clippinger says. 
 
 This article appeared in print under the headline "E-citizens unite" 
 
 Leader: "Estonia's e-citizen test is a test for us all" 
 
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 Edward Lucas has a habit of popping up at pivotal moments in European history. In March 1990, shortly after Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union, the Economist editor caught a flight to Vilnius and received the first Lithuanian visa: number 0001, a stamp-sized chink in the Iron Curtain that got him arrested and deported by Soviet authorities. On Monday, Lucas helped chip away at borders once again. In a ceremony in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a friend of Lucas's from Ilves's previous career as a journalist, made Lucas Estonia's first e-resident. And just like that, the word "resident" took on new meaning, distilled in the smart card below: Estonia's very first e-resident card, presented to the Economist's editor Edward Lucas. #eresidency #Estonia pic.twitter.com/CsPJuMzxE9 — Silver Tambur (@SilverTambur) December 1, 2014 To be clear: E-residency is not a path to citizenship; it's not legal residency. It cannot be used as a travel document or a picture ID. Instead, it's a form of supranational digital identity issued, for the first time, by a country. It's the online self, now with a government imprimatur. And it's the latest innovation from a tech-savvy nation that brought you Skype, the world's first digitally signed international agreement, and an intricate national ID system that allows citizens to speedily elect politicians and file taxes online. The Baltic republic is so wired that officials are even contemplating uploading the government's digital infrastructure to the cloud so that it can continue operating if Russia invades Estonia. 
 
 Lucas is British and lives in London. He speaks "very basic spoken Estonian" and in the 1990s worked as a journalist in Tallinn, where his oldest son was born. Beyond that, his Estonian identity now consists of an ID card with a microchip for authentication and digital signatures, plus a card reader to help generate those signatures. The card will allow him to do things like sign documents, register a company in Estonia, conduct transactions with an Estonian bank account, and order prescriptions in Estonian pharmacies—all online, and from anywhere in the world. E-residents, in other words, will have access to many digital services that Estonians already enjoy, rather than having to go about these tasks through a more ponderous, paper-based process. As Lucas sees it, the biggest benefit of Estonian e-residency is "having a digital signature valid anywhere in the EU, or in any other country which uses electronic authentication" (Estonia is an EU member). He can, for example, use his new digital ID to a buy a ticket on a German train. And he can send authenticated emails, including encrypted messages to other cardholders. "I can identify myself and other people online," he explained by email. "This is one of the biggest weaknesses of the internet. I do not know whether the people who send me e-mails are really those people, or just impersonating them (perhaps even cybercriminals who have broken into an e-mail account). Similarly it is hard for me to prove that I am me. Having a state-issued digital signature means that I can sign an e-mail (and if I wish encrypt it)." In its embryonic form, at least, the program is a cross between techno-utopian ambition and bureaucratic reality—a theoretically seamless, borderless digital system grafted onto a messy physical world. E-residents will, for example, be able to use their Estonian bank accounts from anywhere they can get Internet, but they'll need to visit those banks in person to open the accounts. Anyone in the world over age 18 can apply for Estonian e-residency, but applicants need to first visit a Police and Border Guard office in Estonia, where they'll submit paperwork, pay a €5o ($62) fee, and provide biometric data (a facial image and fingerprints) for a background check—an attempt to keep criminals and hackers out of the system. Accepted e-residents will be able to pick up their ID cards within two weeks at the same office where they applied.
– Estonia is known as one of the world's most tech-savvy countries. Not only is it the birthplace of Skype, but its national ID system allows its citizens to file taxes and even elect politicians online. Now, the tiny Baltic republic of 1.3 million is issuing smart cards to so-called e-residents, thereby allowing people (regardless of their offline citizenship) to sign documents online, register companies in Estonia, and even order prescriptions from Estonian pharmacies, reports the Atlantic. "This is the beginning of the erosion of the classic nation-state hegemony," an MIT digital identity researcher tells New Scientist. In fact, the first person issued such an ID isn't Estonian at all; Economist journalist Edward Lucas, a Brit who happened to be the first person issued an Estonian visa when it broke from the Soviet Union in 1990, says that while he'll still be a "proud and loyal British subject," he will now be identifying himself "with an Estonian-issued digital ID" where he is "not constrained by national boundaries." The card costs roughly $60, and e-residents must apply in Estonia, provide a photo and fingerprints, and pick up the card within two weeks at the office where they applied. (Check out what an Estonian hacker gang did in 2012.)