Reuters just published a story about a big cache of data ISIS left as it retreated from Manbij. It’s great news that the military got these materials, as it will helps us defeat ISIS. Just as important is this part.

The material, gathered as fighters moved from village to village surrounding the town of Manbij, includes notebooks, laptops, USB drives, and even advanced math and science textbooks rewritten with pro-Islamic State word problems, Colonel Chris Garver, the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said in a news briefing.

The U.S.-backed fighters – an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces – have gathered more than 4 terabytes of digital information, and the material, most of it in Arabic, is now being analyzed by the U.S-led coalition fighting the militant group.

This retreat is happening as we speak. That means that US forces were able to exploit the data almost immediately on seizing it. And that, in turn, either means it is not encrypted, it is badly encrypted, or the US also got passwords for encrypted files along with the rest of the stash.

Perhaps this can put to rest the calls to weaken encryption because ISIS is using it to great effect?

Update: Here’s another story on this making it clear the US is exploiting this data right away.