Reply All Fiasco Compromises Whistleblower Email Addresses
Talking Points Memo has the details here:
This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an efforts to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department.
The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the
Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee
had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately
about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept
anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity
would be held in the "strictest confidence."
But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".
D'oh.
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