THE LAND OF I KNOW NOT WHAT AND I KNOW NOT WHERE

neighbouring Latvia, but it, too, has a sleazy side. Amongst the clubs is the evocative Depeche Mode Baar, which only plays records by the eponymous 1980s band from Essex and is decked out as a shrine to the cultural legacy of Britain in the early days of Margaret Thatcher.

Tallinn's strange but welcoming atmosphere was heightened because I arrived only a week before midsummer's eve and the dawning of the fabled White Nights. Dark does not descend until just after midnight, and the light starts returning an hour and a half later. In a week's time it would be light for twenty-four hours of the day.

This jumbled crossroads of imperial ambition, peculiar modern cultural icons and the dreamy nature of light form an ideal backdrop for the annual gathering of the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD0E), the NATO-backed complex that researches all aspects of cyber warfare. The characters at this conference live in a contemporary Wonderland where convention is oft disregarded - ponytails and wire-rimmed glasses earnestly exchange information with starched military uniforms about 'SQL injection vulnerabilities'. Besuited civil servants are deep in conversation with young men in jeans and T-shirts detailing the iniquities of 'man-in-the-middle attacks'.

To grasp even the very basics of cyber security in its rich variety, one must be prepared to learn countless new idioms that are being constantly added to or amended. Otherwise you can listen to a conversation that in basic vocabulary and syntax structure is unmistakably English, but is nonetheless completely meaningless to those unschooled in the arcane language. It is, of course, embarrassing continually having to ask people fluent in the tongue why a 'buffer overload' can have alarming consequences for the security of your network, but geeks are not a patronising clan and are generally happy to oblige.

Estonia may be small, but it is the most wired country in Europe and one of the leading digital powers in the world, from where - among other inventions - came Skype. Free wireless can be found in most places, as connectivity is considered a basic right, not a privilege. You won't find hotels gouging your wallet for Internet access here.

However, I was talking to Hillar Aarelaid not about Estonia's go-ahead approach, but about its fabled position in the now fast-growing history of international digital strife.

In early 2007 the Estonian government announced its intention to move the memorial to the fallen of the Red Army during the Great