Friday, May 11, 2007

Economist and Estonia

I've used Economist as my main source of information about foreign affairs for years now and i have frequently complained of the low level of analysis of international events in Estonian media. But when I start getting most interesting news about my home country from Economist, i start getting really worried about our newspapers. But the latest Economist has a worthwhile story about Russian cyber-attacks towards Estonia.

Clearly Economist takes it very seriously:
no country has experienced anything on this scale.
“If a member state's communications centre is attacked with a missile, you call it an act of war. So what do you call it if the same installation is disabled with a cyber-attack?” asks a senior [NATO] official


But this Estonian official probably overdid a bit:
Estonia's defence ministry goes further: a spokesman compares the attacks to those launched against America on September 11th 2001.


And to point to the seriousness of the issue:
“We are back to the stone age, telling the world what is going on with phone and fax,” says an Estonian internet expert.
Well, when yesterday the Russian rail company announced that the passenger train between Tallinn and St. Petersburg will start running again, they did it by a telegram.

An interesting country we are living in! Too bad we get good coverage only once a week.