Unbelievable

Nice going.

This summer the House Judiciary Committee [ed: chaired by John Conyers] launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department.

[...]

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:".

Only the email addresses were exposed; none of the names or other identifying information of the whistleblowers was revealed.

  TPM Muckraker

Still…not very confidence building, is it? (And, some people actually use their names in their email addresses.)

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

A committee spokesperson emailed the following statement in response to TPMmuckraker's questions:

”The Committee apologizes for any concern this error may have caused, and is making every effort to protect the confidentiality of those who chose to provide information on the tip line.”

[...]

[A]lso, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to public email address of Vice President Cheney.

I think they just as well close down that shop. Would-be whistleblowers probably aren’t going to be coming forward now.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.