A spokesman for the Taliban, like so many office workers before him, just learned the difference between CC and BCC the hard way.
According to ABCNews, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmedi (yes, the Taliban has PR guys) emailed an ordinary press release last week, but he made a critical mistake before hitting "send." Instead of distributing a blind carbon copy (BCC) to the email's hundreds of recipients, which would have hidden their email addresses from one another, Ahmedi sent a carbon copy (CC), exposing all the email addresses to everyone who received the message.
Fortunately for the Taliban, it doesn't look anything really scandalous was revealed.
The list, made up of more than 400 recipients, consists mostly of journalists, but also includes an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an l Afghan [sic] consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.
At least one of those journalists is unhappy about having his contact info visible on such a list.
"Taliban have included all 4 of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list of 500 email addresses," tweeted journalist Mustafa Kazemi, who's based in Afghanistan. "Quite reassuring to my safety."
Reason.com notes that Ahmedi has posted nothing about the snafu on his Twitter account, @Qariyusufahmadi.
Read the entire ABCNews story here.
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