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President Ilves at the high-level forum in Vilnius: the safety of e-services does not imply secluding oneself

07.11.2013

Yesterday, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves spoke at the international ICT forum ICT2013 in Vilnius, which focused on growth, creativity and innovation. In the course of the discussion on modernisation and building bridges, the Estonian Head of State stressed the importance of trust when developing e-services and promoting innovation, especially in light of recent concerns over privacy.

"Now the trend seems to be more towards dismantling bridges and building forts, not the other way around," the President stated and warned that loss of trust and withdrawing would eventually make us give up everything positive that we have achieved with IT so far.

"What we have achieved in Estonia so far is possible thanks to a good cloud-based architecture and safe e-identity," President Ilves said. The safety of e-services comprises three elements: privacy, integrity and manageability. Due to recent scandals, people are most concerned about privacy, but in reality, corrupting the integrity of the data or distorting them is the greatest threat, because when false data is added to systems, it could damage the infrastructure or even put lives in danger.

"We should keep in mind that the aim of technology is to improve the quality of life," President Ilves said. Therefore, both politicians as well as businessmen must realise that you can't deal with the threats of the networking 21st century world by using legislation from the 19th century.

The Estonian Head of State also participated in the ICT2013-related seminar at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, where the development of the common market of the European Union and cloud computing was discussed. At the seminar, he stated that trust is also the key to developing the European commom market, including the digital market of services.

"We cannot react to the current crisis of trust by withdrawing into ourselves, and drawing borders," the President warned. Instead, clear international legislation, safe data processing architecture and smart technical solutions are needed, so that we could move towards common and transnationally compatible and safe e-services throughout Europe.

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