“The Policemen Were Shocked - Karaeu Was Afraid to Answer Even the Calls of His Acquaintances”

How the leaks of cyber partisans sparked panic in the Interior Ministry.

Work in the district departments of internal affairs is transferred to paper, online communication - to correspondence by regular mail. Former security officials told Nasha Niva how their current colleagues reacted to the hackers' leaks and recent investigations.

"Karaeu did not even answer calls from his acquaintances."

"We have repeatedly heard from people in the Ministry of Internal Affairs that they are all shocked by the hacking of the database. One employee, for example, writes to us in plain text: everyone is shocked. Ordinary policemen do not understand how it is possible," says the representative of the association of former enforcers.

According to him, the current employees are afraid that everyone was bugged and that now their criticism of their superiors may become public.

"Of course, in private conversations, everyone discusses their management. They criticize them. Therefore, people are afraid that these conversations will be used against them," says the interlocutor of Nasha Niva.

The reaction of the heroes of the last leaks is still unknown. But sources say that former Interior Minister Yury Karaeu, for example, did not answer phone calls for three days after the leaked recording of his speech.

“He didn’t even answer calls from his acquaintances,” says the former security official.

"There will probably not be an indicative reaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the leaks."

“There will probably not be an indicative reaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the leaks. The ministry will most likely continue to pretend that nothing happened. Information reaches us that there is an order not to fire or punish anyone to show the employees that the action allegedly did not have serious consequences.

Although I think that someone should be imprisoned for this since this data was saved haphazardly, which led to its leakage. People should be punished for this,” the source said.

“One gets the impression that the ministry has not yet understood how the leaks could have happened. I see the reason in general bungling and technical incompetence,” says a representative of the former security officials.

"The work is being transferred to paper, regular mail and CDs"

Former security officials are now aware of some of the consequences of leaked conversations and databases.

They argue that, first, online billing - tracking a person's location - is now unavailable in the ROVD.

“Previously, the Mayak databank was used for this. But after the information leak, this data bank was taken from the territorial police department. Access points remained only in regional offices.

And now the employees of the district departments are forced to send written requests by regular mail in order to receive billing information,” the source said. "Since there are many requests, and they are considered one by one, this affects the speed of responding to crimes."

Secondly, the former security officials say, the access points for wiretapping were taken from the ROVD, which in the official language is called "operational and technical measures No. 2."

“Previously, an officer from the ROVD could listen to what the persons involved in criminal cases were saying or are saying,” the source explains. "Now you need to first write a request to the Department of Preoperative Activities in Minsk or its regional divisions.

There, the necessary records of conversations are recorded on CDs and sent to the district department. All this complicates the work and shows the chaos that happens in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Maybe they thought there were leaks to the ROVD through these points? Inexplicable."

"After the leaks and investigations, the acting security forces began to contact us more often."

“After the leaks and investigations, the acting security forces began to contact us more often and send inside information. Sometimes these are stories about what is happening in the ROVD. And sometimes we receive official documents. The jump is not sharp, but more information began to merge. And we have more contacts,” says a representative of the association of ex-security officials.

They believe that thanks to the publication of telephone conversations, the police are coming to understand that the ministry cannot protect its employees. After all, it turns out that now you can find out absolutely everything about any employee.

“It affects them. The dissatisfaction with the service has certainly increased. Especially among ordinary employees who did not see the torture and believed the words of the ideologists,” they say in the association.

Former security officials add that the tendency for layoffs continues in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It began, according to them, in August 2020.