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" The problem of online identity is expressed best in an old 'New Yorker' cartoon with a picture of a dog next to a computer, and the dog says, 'No one online knows you're a dog.' "

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" Until defense of democracy in the digital era is taken up by governments collectively, both in NATO and outside the alliance, liberal democracies will remain vulnerable to the cyberthreats of the 21st century. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Digital

Will

" My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities. "

" In both Russia and the U.S., there are a very small number of very, very rich people, and then there are a lot of people who don't have anything. The less inequality you have in a society, the more social peace you have. It's kind of a no-brainer. "

" We Estonians will do what is necessary to join the European Union. "

" I was surprised by some of my French colleagues who immediately assumed that because I spoke English with an American accent, that, therefore, you must be a supporter of whoever is the current president of the United States. There seems to be this widespread feeling that, 'Oh, American accent - therefore, you like cowboy boots.' "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Feeling

You

" When hackers have access to powerful computers that use brute force hacking, they can crack almost any password; even one user with insecure access being successfully hacked can result in a major breach. "

" The E-government cabinet, E-health services, online voting, online pre-filled tax returns, e-mobile parking, are all examples of Estonian innovation, but far more importantly, they are examples of the transformative power of intensive and extensive use of Information Technology in the public sector. "

" In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island. "

" Digital warfare, in the Clausewitz definition as 'the continuation of policy by other means,' reached Western public consciousness via my own country, Estonia, in 2007 when our governmental, banking, and news media servers were hit with 'distributed denial-of-service attacks,' which is when hackers overload servers until they shut down. "

" Liberal democracies do not and often cannot respond in kind to cyberattacks on their own way of governance. "

" Can the wider West establish a global 'cyber NATO?' It would be difficult, but so, too, was the founding of NATO itself, which was called into being only after successive communist coups in Eastern Europe. "

" Little by little, we're becoming a boring Nordic country. "

" When your country is in dire straits, it doesn't matter whether you're a social democrat or not. "

" Democracies stand on several key pillars: Free and fair elections, human rights, the rule of law, and a free untrammeled media. Until 2016, an open media was seen as a resilient democratic pillar that supported the others. "

" I remember starting to read about the Soviet Union when I was eight years old; I think I was reading my father's 'New York Times.' "

" I was the child of refugees. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Refugees

Child

" I'm an American by accent, and I grew up in the States, living there between the age of three and 24. "

" Diplomacy between a powerful, victorious army and a side that's losing doesn't really work well. "

" That was something that shaped my thinking regarding Estonia: the idea that we should be getting our young people to work with computers. "

" The minute a collective alliance fails to live up to its agreement to collective defence, then from that moment on, everybody is on the run. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Agreement

Run

" When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights. "

" The whole information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure must be regarded as an 'ecosystem' in which everything is interconnected. It functions as a whole; it must be defended as a whole. "

" If getting young people computer-literate through putting school systems online is a no-brainer, at least in retrospect, getting older people and those in rural areas online can be a tougher nut to crack. "

" Nothing costs more than the loss of freedom. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Nothing

Loss

" When our diplomats go abroad, they are surprised that they can't do the things that they can do here. "

" The Russian Federation's practice of instant citizenship, whereby Russian passports are distributed willy-nilly to ethnic Russians abroad so they can be 'protected' in their current homeland, is unacceptable. Passports are travel documents, not a tool to justify aggression. "

" Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy? "

" The first time cyber was even a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, which is - I mean, we've got hundreds of specialists there - was 2011. That's how long it took. "

" Where a country lies is a subjective decision and only in part a product of its own desire. Much, if not most, is determined by what others believe about it. "

" The rights that people have offline must also be protected online. "