Taliban Accidentally Reveals Mailing List
On a long enough career timeline, every person on Earth is bound to encounter a non-BCC-ed mass e-mail. It would seem that this even applies to the Taliban. According to ABC News, Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official spokesman for the terrorist group, made the classic newbie e-mail user’s mistake when he forwarded a routine press release from another Taliban spokesman, using the carbon copy field instead of the blind carbon copy field for recipients' e-mail addresses. As a result, he inadvertently revealed the e-mail addresses of everyone on the invitation list to each other. As to the intelligence value of the e-mail addresses that were revealed, it would be fair to say that it would be questionable at best. A few unsavory individuals may be on the list, but most were journalists, plus a few politicians, activists, academics, and so on. So the mistake is more of a timely reminder of the power of BCC than it is enlightening—but that doesn’t make it any less amusing. ABC News said that Ahmedi—whose name is also spelled Ahmadi in many news reports—did not respond to e-mails requesting a comment.
