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US Democrats Accidentally Publish Whistleblowers' Email Addresses
iluvcapra writes "The US House Judiciary Committee recently emailed all of its potential whistleblowers information about how it was restructuring its whistleblower program. Unfortunately for its sources, it emailed them this information with their addresses in the "To:" field (and not the Bcc: field) It also cc:'d this email to the Vice President.
I'd like to think think this is some sort of ingenious subterfuge, but I'm doubtful."
This reminds me of that Army guy who "anonymously" complained about the torture of Iraqi prisoners, only be thanked by name by the Secretary of Defense on TV while in an Army canteen in Iraq. The message is clear: if you are a whistleblower, you will regret it.
Tips were submitted from a web form with no email verification. Some joker likely thought it would be funny to use the public address for the VP's office when submitting a tip. When the mass mailing was sent it out, it got sent to that address as well.
I participate in a Product Testing group maybe once or twice a year and I had to sign a strict Non Disclosure Document and was assured in return that my Identity would also be kept private.
One day I get an email FROM: The President of the Company thanking me for my help in the past year.
The TO: field also had the emails of EVERYONE else who had apparently participated.
Some of the email addresses were work emails or similar with things like: john.smith@example.com
Not difficult to figure out who they were.
After replying and tearing the President a new one, I got a polite email back saying there had been an "error" and they apologized.
"They would never intentionally disclose my personal information."
So I replied again and said that if this was not intentional then it was incompetence and if it was incompetence what plans did they have for ensuring this would not happen again?
If I happened to "accidently" disclose what products I was testing would I be able to use the same excuse? Or would I get sued?
I got no answer to that one.
I like microcars
Your list: Gulf of Tonkin, Rolling Thunder, 1968 Democratic convention, J Edgar Hoover's decades of antics, Jim Crow, Japanese Internment, Bay of Pigs. As for habeus corpus, Bill Clinton signed the first limitation since the civil war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
This does not absolve the present junta of any of its misdeeds, however. But it does refute your point.
But you see, doing nothing (at least, doing nothing very visible to the public) was the correct response to the first WTC incident, and would have been a better response to the second. Haven't you noticed how much more crap everyday life is, this time around? That's the effects of the crazy, exaggerated response that you're feeling. The attack itself was just part of an ongoing pattern where the US gets its terrorist attacks (and yes, every country suffers them routinely, and always has) in rarer, larger lumps. It was (in the statistical sense) expected, and need have changed nothing.
To fight terrorism, you need to avoid instilling fear. Because terrorism is the instilling of systemic fear. I understand that the word was originally coined for the case where the government is doing it, and I'm not sure that isn't what's happening now....
...At this point they are x-raying your shoes and stealing your drinks, to my mind for political gain. They figure that in dangerous times, you will vote for dangerous people. Statistically, the only thing that's measurably dangerous about the 21st century is the state of the environment - and I'm not trying to be a scaremonger myself; it's just that now that a significant portion of the earth's surface is under aggressive active 'management,' it's an obvious recipe for disaster that we are not, in fact, managing it. But it seems like Al Gore is the only person in politics who has figured out how to articulate this effectively as a source of fear, so everyone else is starting wars and x-raying footwear to, as they say, 'scare up the votes.'
At a deeper level, this may all be a reflection of party politics, as a phenomenon. After all, in times of calm, we're less inclined to think in us-versus-them terms, so, logically, we're less inclined to support parties over policies. To get the majority of frankly sensible people to vote for their parties without question, regardless of any unsavoury planks in party platforms, perhaps a level of freaked-out-ness is required. It's a sobering thought.
Seriously, the notion that this was accidental is amusing.
I remember years ago when I worked on the recall campaign for an infamous governor (who is currently in prison) - we tried to oust him from office and had to collect 10% of the voting public's signatures on petition in order to force a recall election. The governor laughed at the recall effort going on television saying, "I do not think these signatures are legitimate. I plan to look over each and every name of whoever signed these petitions just to check" *wink* *wink* This kind of subtle intimidation of activists and people who take a stand against wrongdoing is nothing new. I wouldn't be surprised if the exposure of the whistleblowers was intentional.