Prague, Sept 6 (CTK) – The web pages on which former Czech president Vaclav Klaus posted a petition against immigration have been hacked and there were attempts to manipulate signatures, Petr Macinka, from the Vaclav Klaus Institute, told CTK yesterday.
He said more than 20 hacking attempts were registered on Saturday, when Klaus unveiled the petition.
Macinka said work on securing the pages continues and fictitious signatures are being removed.
He said the petition, calling for the securing the Czech border and for the rejection of refugee-sharing quotas enjoys a big public support.
On Saturday alone, dozens of thousands of supporters joined it, while at the same time, someone does not want the call to be successful, Macinka said.
CTK has a video that shows how quickly big numbers of the names of alleged supporters appear under the petition at www.protimigraci.cz.
The author of the video, who says he is a university student, said the quick collection of signatures is made possible by a special programme that he made.
“I created the programme within an hour, the server did not have fundamental security elements,” he said.
Thanks to the application, several thousand signatures can be collected in a minute.
Macinka said the web page is prepared for such cases, however.
Klaus’s petition calls for the government to secure internal security and the inviolability of the country’s border, rejects refugee quotas and calls for the observance of valid asylum policy agreements.
Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) said Klaus works in a populist way with the topic of the migrant crisis.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) said Klaus’s petition does not move the debate on migration anywhere and that clear steps on the level of the European Union, not petitions are needed to cope with the situation.
Klaus’s successor in the presidential post, Milos Zeman, on the contrary, supported the petition.
“This initiative contains the ideas that I have been saying all the time,” he told journalists.
