The Department of Homeland Security can't keep unauthorized people from posting to their mailing list. Computerword has the details of another small but telling example of Bush administration incompetence.
Here’s the story: DHS provides a daily summary of news items for its mailing list subscribers, which includes people with security and disaster response roles, vendors and news media. But its mailing list was misconfigured today. Anyone who hit "reply all" reached everyone one the list, triggering some 200 emails -- and counting. The temptation to reach out was too much. It quickly became a big networking party.
The results soon became hilarious...
Many used it as a opportunity to say hello, where they were writing from, inquire about jobs, show support for their team, "Go Hogs," there may have been some matchmaking, and one even mentioned that his firm sold anti-spam products.
Wrote one:
I don’t think everyone realizes that yet, but what a nice way for all of us to get to know one another!
Some of the responses
-- I like long walks on the beach and a nice chardonnay with my roasted duck.
-- Or even a nice chianti with that roasted duck - it is autumn!
-- Look at this as a business development opportunity. (To that end, one chimed: does anyone need homeland security consulting?)
It's amusing, but it's also annoying. It's bad enough that the DHS couldn't configure a mailing list correctly. It's worse that hundreds of unwanted emails were sent out to all their subscribers before they got around to fixing the problem.