Szerepka: I think we will give up electronic registration in future
Poland's Ambassador tells Euroradio why they cannot overcome Belarusian hackers and how they are going to replace the electronic registration.
Euroradio:
Three weeks ago you told me you were going to Warsaw to seek measures
to overcome the Belarusian hackers who intercepted the electronic forms for
visa applications registration at the Polish consulate. Have you found
anything?
Leszek Szerepka: There will be no quick answers. We will
probably give up the electronic registration in future. We are thinking of
something else, like call centers. However, it requires a lot of technical
training. You know, at this scale and the number of visas it is not an easy
thing to do. We are thinking on how to facilitate the process of obtaining the
Polish visa, but it won’t be an easy success. Now we decide which option to choose
to grant the most effective work. We have not forgotten about this problem with
the registration.
Euroradio: Maybe it
makes sense to give up the electronic registration now, if all the forms are
intercepted by the hackers anyway?
Leszek Szerepka: Not all the forms. In some consulates we made
a division into categories: shopping, culture, sports, "vips", any
political activity. There are limits in certain categories. And this makes it
difficult for the hackers, because usually the greatest demand is for shopping
visas. But if we had completely abandoned the electronic system, the queues
would have only grown. After all, the work would be done much more slowly. And
all this despite the current demand for visas!
Euroradio: The head of the Belarusian “K” Command reproached the Polish
Embassy in his interview to Euroradio, like, if you had passed technical
information about your computer systems and programs, they would have been able
to tell you how to overcome the hackers. Why are you not willing to cooperate
with our law enforcement officers?
Leszek Szerepka: We got the paper from the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, I read it. These problems and the tips that they give us -
our experts can handle all this themselves. We asked the Belarusians to work
with those intermediaries who act in front of our consulates. They can easily
be found and stopped. That was our main request - to deal the people working in
front of our consulates, taking orders and performing the function of mediators
for money. Technical characteristics of our systems have nothing to do with it,
I think.
Euroradio: There appeared information that Polish consular departments
started issuance of long-term visas for a smaller term - not for a year, but
for 3-6 months. Why is this happening?
Leszek Szerepka: According to my information, the number of
long-term visas is constantly increasing. I do not exclude that something like
this might happen, but these are just individual cases.
Photo: Zmicier Lukashuk
