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State of Alaska Prints Out Palin's E-Mails; Online Distribution 'Impractical'
ZipK writes "Three years after numerous citizens and news organizations requested the release of Sarah Palin's gubernatorial e-mails, the State of Alaska is finally making ready to make them available. In print. In Juneau. News organizations must fly or sail to Juneau and pick up the 24,000 page disclosure in person. The state claims it impractical to release the original electronic versions of the e-mails, so the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Mother Jones, ProPublica and MSNBC each plan to turn some or all of the printouts back into searchable, easily distributed electronic data. Thanks, Alaska." Where's WikiLeaks North?
Do you realize how long that internet tube would have to be to reach Alaska?
Any chance you hire out your book scanning equipment? Or does it only work on bound books, rather than stacks of paper?
There's no need to hack her Yahoo! account anymore...or is there?
This is total bullshit. Even the most vendor locked email client has export options (I'm looking at you Outlook). Even then, it's trivial to use a print-to-PDF program to keep everything electronic.
This stinks to high heaven and me thinks this means there's something in there people don't want to get out. Reporters are going to have a field day.
The state claims it impractical to release the original electronic versions of the e-mails
That's pretty good evidence of malfeasance all of it's own.
At least the journos now know there'll be a reason to collect and analyse all of those US Letter pages...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
As we learned during the last Presidential campaign, Alaska is close enough to Soviet Russia that instead of sending emails to Alaska, email sends you to Alaska.
Wingdings or Comicsans I imagine.
I wonder how often they had to fix their dot matrix printer paper so that they could print?
"our bandwidth is too small! we're only alaska!"
of course, copying the data *once* to somewhere in the main US that has good hosting is way behind the thought process of alaskans?
nah, lets print out what started out as electronic data files. AND lets insist people fly here causing more carbon-harm.
this bitch should be palin-slapped.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Starvation! Incoming requests prevent processing of prior requests!
FTFA: "The nearly three-year delay has been attributed largely to the sheer volume of the release and the flood of requests."
Bull Shit!!!!
Follow up: Really!!!! Do you really think this is going to keep news agencies from showing up to get a copy. Someone will end up digitize it and it will get distributed widely. They are purposefully making it harder to search the emails by doing it this way. Plus, its just easier to loose a piece of paper with what Palin don't want out and say, "Whoops", than it is to say that something was mistakenly left out of the digital copy.
It seems that a shortage in stone tablets and required etchers resulted in them having to painstakingly print out all the emails.
Wow, what a waste of paper!! Seriously, printing out the emails? How about just putting them on line? impractical for whom?
"You killed my yogurt!" --Fred Fredburger
Maybe she actually IS the sharpest tool in that drawer.
Are you kidding me? The state claims it impractical to release the original electronic versions of the e-mails.
Who in the state said that? Better yet, why does the public put up with this bullshit?
So basically a group of text files which are already in the smallest format possible minus compression, have to be printed, can't be mailed, and of course the ShitStream Media will be first to start milking this non-story for the next 2+ years, all while conveniently ignoring the fact that this Bitch can't be trusted with national security directives. e.g. don't use public email for official use
I would be looking deep into Alaska's CAFR documents about now. It's about time the state, the shitstream media and the officials get fucked.
I think just about EVERY person on Slashdot will disagree with the idea that print is easier than electronic. This is simply a lie from the state government. Which citizen's group do I send money to for the purpose of pushing legislation that requires the government is honest to the people. Lies like this should be actionable.
"The state claims it impractical to release the original electronic versions of the e-mails"
What they should do is, print them out, then scan them back in as images, then save as PDFs under randomly generated file names, similar to what Microsoft did in the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust case.
Print and electronic release. A print copy would be a nice verification that the electronic version hasn't been altered after release; but only allowing the print is far too cumbersome.
It does have merit to do this, but only in conjunction with an electronic copy.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
The great senator from Alaska said it best: "The internet isn't just a truck you can dump stuff on, it's a series of tubes..."
Obviously, dumping Palin's email into the internets would cause them all to clog up, taking weeks for people to download their internets.
Actually overheard once at Best Buy: "Does this computer come with the latest version of the internet?"
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I realize it is just a state government but there can still be sensitive information that needs to be redacted. Electronically doing this is not an option.
Although redacting the 25000 pages and then converting back to pdf would be reasonable.
But I also don't think requiring the data to be picked up in person, with a valid picture ID, is that out of the ordinary. As a citizen (i.e. not a journalist), that's the way you would have to get many documents.
to hide things in a machine searchable file.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
...get those #TakenOutOfContext hashtags ready!
While the "impracticality" of putting it online is a bald-faced lie, I can see why they don't want to. If Cardinal Richelieu can find a reason to hang a (wo)man is three sentences the mainstream media will have no problem finding lots of political hay in 24,000 emails. Especially with someone as controversial and, ah, differently spoken as Mrs. Palin.
Is it ethical? You could make an argument that only Alaskans should really be concerned with how Governor Palin acted in an official capacity. She's a public figure, but unless she actually runs for president I'd say that these emails serve more as a distraction than as newsworthy.
Like most of us, wikileaks just doesn't consider her to be relevant.. Besides, the ticket fare is tied up in lawyer fees...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I'm tired of these anonymous decision makers and their ridiculous decisions. Find out their name. Post their name. Where's the FBI?
Maybe the Alaskan state government should ask Yahoo to export the emails for them. I bet that's where the bulk of them are stored, in a personal account.
then Alaska's primary tourism draw wont work for you, but be glad, now they have a great reason to go to Alaska, Sarah Palin's e-mails.
It's probably also being stored in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
from the statutes and regulations related to FOIA requests of the Great State of Alaska:
Sec. 40.25.115. Electronic services and products.
(a) Notwithstanding AS 40.25.110 (b) - (d) to the contrary, upon request and payment of a fee established under (b) of this section, a public agency may provide electronic services and products involving public records to members of the public. A public agency is encouraged to make information available in usable electronic formats to the greatest extent feasible . The activities authorized under this section may not take priority over the primary responsibilities of a public agency.
I would guess that you could credibly argue that the authorities overseeing the FOIA request did not make into available in electronic form to the greatest extent possible (e.g., provided on CD-ROM).
What they're basically saying is, we think there's something to hide. Go go gadget OCR!
What Palin does and says (and writes) may seem completely stupid to most people, but to her followers she is a genius. She could very well be the next president of the United States. It's a good thing for her that Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't born in America.
Its free, it does not require the emails to be any particular format because its installed as a virtual printer.
That's like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Or maybe something Woody Allen or Mel Brooks would come up with.
1. 2.
Palin's email dirtied the systems up so bad with viruses and trojans, that they had to print them out for record keeping but deleted the entire account. She reminds me of the kind of user that says "I only ever get emails with paper clips from friends, why wouldn't I trust them?"
Poor Alaska Governor's office IT department wasted 2 years just to clean up the mail server.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
take your pick:
/., what do <ul>/</ul>, <li>/</li> and supposed to do?!!! Goddamn you're a bunch of idiots.
- incompetence
or
- malfeasance
"Oh yeah? Well I'm not fired, I QUIT!"
BTW
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You don't understand that Richelieu quote, grasshopper.
Ya see, what Richelieu was saying there was basically just flaunting his abuse of power. That's it. It has nothing to do with the usual idiotic interpretations like too many laws, or everyone is guilty of something, or anything.
What Richelieu actually did was employ forgers to write whole contracts with the devil in the handwriting of his opponents. Then have them waterboarded until they confess, and then execute them.
You think I'm kidding? Check out for example Urbain Grandier for a documented case of such a victim of Richelieu.
THAT is what he needed six lines in the handwriting of someone for: as a writing sample for the forgers Richelieu employed.
And while in that quote he's clever enough to not directly say that, it's a very thinly veiled reminder of why it's not wise to cross him. If you can write and ever wrote anything, he can "find" something else in your handwriting to hang you for, even though you don't remember ever writing that.
I hardly think that Palin's emails are in any similar danger. And releasing them as paper is hardly a solution. If they're worried about forgeries in her name, then the sane way would be to release them as a file with a public secure hash value. That way if anyone says they found a damning email in there, you can see if their file actually matches the hash value. If it doesn't, it's been tampered with, and you can ignore the accusation.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In a recent lawsuit my organization was involved in, the plaintiffs demanded any and all emails from certain individuals related to the case. So our lawyers had us send them all the e-mails in raw electronic form, which they then simply printed out for the plaintiffs. And of course the plaintiffs did the same thing for our side. Kind of a dirty way of complying with the court order if you think about it. I'm sure that neither side printed off the complete e-mail headers, so we're left with just the visible from, to, subject, and date fields, and the message body.
Anyway, when you're on the receiving end of a demand, printing out the e-mails is definitely a common thing in the legal world. So I'm not surprised Alaska would do this. Plus it fits with Palin's policies and platforms. I mean we have all these resources in alaska going to waste, so all these printouts means trees are being put to good use, and the ink used will put all that oil to use as well. Drill baby drill.
Is it stored in a locked file cabinet in the basement in an unused lavatory with a sign on the front "Beware of the Leopard"?
- Hitchhikers Guide
The slashdot crowd of course is going to lambast this decision. But if you take time to think about it rather than reply with a knee-jerk reaction, it really isn't that unreasonable.
What is required to host thousands of emails online?
- A web server. Presumably they have one of these, but is it just a simple website at some hosting company and not very easy to configure or mass-upload to, and perhaps with a limited storage quota? Is it their same server they had in the late 90's that might choke on 24,000 files in one directory?
- How do you convert the emails to individual files which can be hosted? Convert to PDF perhaps? File -> Save As? Either way, it is going to be very labor intensive. Perhaps the email system is old enough that it is even more difficult and time consuming?
- How long do you have to store the online files? Every day they store the files on the server costs them extra $. And every person who downloads the files costs them extra $.
- What type of technical knowledge is required to put all of the pieces together? To a slashdotter it might seem trivial, but a town of 30,000 reachable only by water and air is not the type of place who will employ public servants with the technical expertise of a slashdotter. Their IT staff might consist of a guy who knows how to replace a monitor and reformat Windows XP. They may outsource all of the rest of their IT functions at an hourly cost to the state. All of these email requests are probably going to some poor secretary who has a hard time opening her own email.
- Who should have access? IANAL, but this is a foia request so I presume anybody in America, but is Alaska required to make government documents readily available to the governments of North Korea and Iran? If not, who is going to setup the security to prevent unauthorized access?
Remember, this is a foia request which Alaska has to respond to, but they have no incentive to make it easy at their own taxpayer's expense. It is far cheaper and easier for a small town government office to tell people to come and get the information than it is for them to make it easily accessible over the internet.
Everyones spouting off how easy it would be... You're not thinking it through. You can either "select all > Print" or... Export them all... ok... and put them where? Ok, we need a website, we'll need to get bids, we're the government after all. How much traffic should we estimate? Lets see, the private emails from one of the most divisive politicians in the country... and news agencies are likely to link directly to the source... Or we could just print them out and let the news agencies host them... It's really a no-brainer.
Why don't they turn the emails into the ASCII representation of the font used? That would be the ultimate sabotage by a state.
BTW: I love these gotchas, often they are the punchline.
cb
Except they couldn't pay a 17 year old kid ten dollars to make an Adobe PDF printer default and write a script to batch-print all of them ... so when they hit they hit print once they wind up with ... pdfs!
Then you pay the kid ten more dollars to "combine all the pdfs with Adobe" into a big hash and produce 25 USB-stick copies of the archive and a server copy with backup. Throw in $5 for Pizza Overhead for the kid.
Seriously. It's like they're trying to make themselves known forever to be obtuse.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Clever indeed, using a strategy that 5 year olds get scolded for. Are the people of Alaska - who this government is directly accountable to - so beaten and downtrodden to permit this kind of bullying by the people that work for them?
What is the GoA afraid of? Is Palin possibly done something more embarrassing in email than she does in front of TV cameras? Makes my head spin...
I never thought of Alaskans as meek or timid, but learn something new every day.
This sounds like a job for Project Gutenberg, since this stuff is public domain. http://gutenberg.org/
You are not the customer.
This level of incompetence goes far to explaining how someone like Sarah Palin could get a governership in the first place.
...but I'll bet you $100 that I could get archive.org or one of the dozens of other repositories of information to host these files within the week.
Someone is just trying to make things difficult for the press.
coding is life
This is a classic maneuver taken right from the law enforcement playbook. In a bunch of places the courthouse would post on their website the arraignments and charges that they processed that day and who the person was because being charged with a crime is public information. The police and DEA shit their pants over this because it made it easy for cartels and large distribution rings to keep tabs on people in their network that got pinched which gives them a heads up if an investigation may be coming or if they need to clear out. Now they have changed it to where you have to actually go down to the courthouse to get this information in-person.
Do you have any idea how long it would take to print those emails out, scan them in and embed the scan into a Word document for online distribution? After all, that's the standard way of distributing data from people in the public sector isn't it?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
They have some small experience with scanning in paper documents, storing them on the web, and making them indexable and searchable.
I could see if they had to physically scan 24,000 pages... but even then they would be doing so for every copy picked up.
Which is more practical... ftps://user:pass@readpalinsemail.com or a scope and grope, flying 3000+ mi (for me), and spending $xxxx.xx?
So what are the rules against someone getting the 24,000 physical pages and scanning/uploading them themselves?
Something witty.
I can't tell if this is being spearheaded by MSNBC or not, but their story has a lot of information about it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43281157/ns/politics-more_politics/
When the Alaska state government uses paper the Lumber Cartel (TinLC) makes money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Didn't the persecute (yes, word choice intentional)> David Kernell for doing just that?!!!
So it is entirely possible. By an amateur.
Stupid fucking bureaucrats think you're all as stupid as they are. And they're half right. Palin can get 50% of the vote, she just needs to win over some 1% special interest and the stupids are in charge again.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The problem is not distributing the already electronic files electronically, but rather ensuring that redacted information remains redacted.
And the media is going to look at Obama's e-mails too. Right? Anyone? ... crickets ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
I've been trying to come up with a real reason that paper might be required, and I was wondering if it was because of some long standing law related to "original" documents that doesn't really make sense with electronic document creation?
This sounds like a troll for the Streisand Effect, which it's obvious plenty of people still don't understand.
The number of pages sounded to me like close to a standard box of copier paper. While scanning and OCRing the documents would be frustrating for an individual, it seems like an obvious step for an organization trying to find out what the state is hiding.
Will email from Palins personal account be included, since at least some state business was reported to have been dealt with from there?
a public oral recitation in Inuit from Braille faxed copies of a iPhoned'ed JPGs of ASR-33 Teletypes output of BINHEXED screenshots of the emails, sorted by their number of vowels.
But they couldn't find a blind Inuit with a strong enough Ebonics/Scottish accent.
An export to Outlook's .pst format would be gigs and gigs (and maybe many more gigs), they might not realize Outlook will let you export to plain old csv as well. I don't know if I buy the "hiding something" thing, as they could easily alter the electronic version before they released it... I would just chalk it up to stupidity. Can't really expect to much from the guv'ment. :)
So the mom/dad finally forced the obnoxious kid to give you the lollipop that was legally yours to begin with. Printing is them licking (or worse) that lollipop before handing it over.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
ROTFLMAO
My gut-assumption is that they did this:
1. FOIA request?? Oh crap!
2. Make false claim: "We can't export our emails electronically because we lack the technical savvy."
3. Print out all emails. Take damning emails out by hand and burn them.
4. Do absolute minimum to give the rest of the paper to news organizations, knowing that they could never reconstruct the original data set.
5. ???
6. Profit!
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
24,000 pages of email in a presentable format, e.g. pdf, would be quite sizeable. Perhaps 'impractical' leans more towards "we do not have capability to serve huge files and getting DDoSed would be a bummer".
They not only get all increased tourism from reporters flying in to get their own copy, but you can bet that there will be a per page cost for copies that the government will charge - probably somewhere around $1.25 per page. They're probably banking on getting a few hundred thousand dollars of revenue this way.
It was found that when she migrated to Arizona the mean IQ of both Alaska and Arizona went down.
Not to defend the State of Alaska or, in any way, defend Sarah Palin (terrible, terrible woman... just terrible), there is an explanation for only providing the printed version of the documents, rather than keeping them in their native format and posting them online. I'm not an attorney licensed in the State of Alaska, I know nothing of Alaska's public records law(s) and I have no information on why or how the decisions were made to release this information. I'm only a person who has been around his share of document requests.
First, native format will never work because of technical issues. The documents would have to be taken from their native format and converted into something else, like PDF. Second, e-mail messages often contain information that is not public information. For example, information exempt by law or plain old personal information. Exempt or personal information would need to be removed or redacted from the documents. (Something that is often times impossible if you are working with the native format.) The documents are either redacted by hand (using a black marker and a copier) or are redacted using a computer program, like Adobe Acrobat. If performed correctly, it is very hard to "crack" a "by hand" redaction job. (New copiers are really good, though.) Using a tool like a computer program to redact documents is not as straight forward as the use of a marker. Many people, myself included, have a difficult time believing that there isn't someone, somewhere who can "crack" the redaction and get to the information contained beneath. Unlikely though it may be, there is that concern. To be 100% sure that the information behind the redaction is safe, you have to redact on the computer and then print the document to a physical form. Sure, you can then rescan, but rescanning 24,000 pages is time consuming and, unless their law requires it, will not be allowed to happen. In conclusion, when it comes to document requests, physical production will always be preferred by the state agency because they can better ensure that the redaction requirements and other privacy laws are being met. Also, going beyond the requirements of state law will probably not happen.
Now, as for the refusal to mail the documents... I think they are being jerks. (Unless state law doesn't require it.)
What is required to host thousands of emails online?
- A web server. Presumably they have one of these, but is it just a simple website at some hosting company and not very easy to configure or mass-upload to, and perhaps with a limited storage quota? Is it their same server they had in the late 90's that might choke on 24,000 files in one directory?
If it were plaintext and compressed they could send it in an email. They could use any free hosting service. Use the FTP server one of their offices probably already has. Again if they're using some old Pentium 1 server that will choke on a large number of files, put it in a ZIP file.
How do you convert the emails to individual files which can be hosted? Convert to PDF perhaps? File -> Save As? Either way, it is going to be very labor intensive. Perhaps the email system is old enough that it is even more difficult and time consuming?
What kind of email system has no export function whatsoever?
- What type of technical knowledge is required to put all of the pieces together? To a slashdotter it might seem trivial, but a town of 30,000 reachable only by water and air is not the type of place who will employ public servants with the technical expertise of a slashdotter. Their IT staff might consist of a guy who knows how to replace a monitor and reformat Windows XP. They may outsource all of the rest of their IT functions at an hourly cost to the state. All of these email requests are probably going to some poor secretary who has a hard time opening her own email.
Anyone with slightly-above-average IT knowledge could do it. Are you saying they have nobody there who's even half-way decent with computers? Anyone working in any IT department should be able to do it, or should not be working in IT. Do they not have an IT department?
I think any of the secretaries at my office could figure it out if asked.
- Who should have access? IANAL, but this is a foia request so I presume anybody in America, but is Alaska required to make government documents readily available to the governments of North Korea and Iran? If not, who is going to setup the security to prevent unauthorized access?
Oh fucking please, if you make it available to the American public, it is trivially fucking easy for anyone in the world to get it. But I'll play your game, if you want some feelgood security, again is there not a single IT person in their dumb little town who can configure an Apache .htaccess to only allow US IPs?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's known as "Abiding by the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law". "Skirting" a law involves finding a way to not have to obey it at all without strictly breaking it.
In this case, "skirting" would likely involve claiming some kind of executive privacy privilege that exempts them from having to release the emails. Much like Clinton did back in the '90's during the various scandals he went through.
Alaska's government has obeyed the letter of the law by releasing the emails. Nowhere in the law does it say that they have to release them in an easy to distribute format.
Besides that, it IS customary to release FOIA documents in hard copy form, so this isn't surprising.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Alaska official: Hey IT guy, we have 24,000 of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's archived e-mails. That's too many to be stored in electronic form, though, right?
IT guy: Uhm, why, no, not at all. I'm not sure if you know this, but e-mail is short for "electronic mail," and the Internet is also electronic. In fact, e-mail comes from the Internet. So the e-mails you are talking about are already electronic.
Alaska official: Right, but converting all of these would be impossible. There are waaaaay too many, right?
IT guy: No, actually. I could convert them to HTML or PDF format right now if you'd like, and we can post them to the state of Alaska web site immediately.
Alaska official: What I'm hearing from you is that it is possible but very, very, difficult.
IT guy: No, it's quite simple, really. I actually did it while you were saying that sentence.
Alaska official: You're fired.
So, you say you're having a financial crisis (or WERE anyways), and your government is going to waste that many taxpayer dollars on this stupid bullshit?
If they could have made it available on stone tablets in cunieform at the top of Denali, they would have
Sure, making life difficult for those asking is one motivation, but it's not as ridiculous as it seems.
The lawyers had to review it all. They will have done so by having it all printed out and then going over the resulting documents.
You can't now just use the original electronic versions since you risk adding back things the lawyers removed, and converting those pages back into electronic format would cost more money and time for the state. So use copies the paper documents that the lawyers spat out and call it done.
Someone has a friend in the printing business and awarded a contract as a political payment. Electronic files can't be used as payment to anyone.
I8-D
That's what makes her noteworthy. She's dumber than Shrub (at least Shrub just bumbled through, rather than double-down on the stupid like Palin does). And THAT takes effort.
OBVIOUSLY they could easily put the emails out there electronically, they just chose not to because it makes it more difficult to go through the data.
Lawyers do this crap all the time, the other side submits a records request, the court orders it, all of a sudden 75 legal-sized boxes of records show up.
The government of Alaska knows it will only add a day or so until world-wide circulation.
Now they can charge *per page* for the emails with
copyright restrictions perhaps?
I perfectly understand what is going on here.
I once paid for a $50 parking ticket in loose pennies. I imagine this tactic is much the same as mine. To waste people's time.
Throw in $5 for Pizza Overhead for the kid.
'Pizza Overhead' is now on the list of Engineering costing extras. Much like Scotty's Rule of 4.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Like Palin or not you have to admit that the media goes way out of the way to try and destroy her. The media has been caught pushing many lies about her as though they are facts. The media does not give other politicians the same kind of scrutiny, not even close
This is Alaska's way of pissing the media off, making them jump through a few hoops before they start to unfairly and unevenly try to target her on the emails. The media are being asses, AK are being asses right back. Who cares.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Didn't some ISPs do the same thing? When they received a huge batch of subscriber information requests, release them printed out on paper and 5 at a time? Now they have some ground to stand on to say it's impracticle to do so electronically.
The most shocking part of this story is that Juneau, a state capital, is inaccessible by road or rail. Really? There's a state capital that can only be reached by air or water (other than Honolulu of course, but that's on an island)? Who knew?
Which citizen's group do I send money to for the purpose of pushing legislation that requires the government is honest to the people.
Pushing to who? The legislators?
There is an inherent Catch-22 in every attempt to fight government corruption: we place the power to fix it in the hands of the people who benefit from it.
Again and again, we see legislators pass laws to "fix" corruption, electoral fraud, campaign finance, etc. And somehow, these problems persist. Well duh. It's because these so-called fixes are just facades to make the politicians look good. They would never actually, really fix the problem or their gravy train would be diminished.
If you actually want to restore democracy, then you have to realize that it requires transcending the politicians. There is one proposed, non-violent, workable solution, called collaborative governance, but the path to it is long, slow, and hard.
However, given the alternative, what do you have to lose? If you're looking to invest time or money in actually, really fixing the issue, then that's where you should be focusing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Living here for about 10 years, and find out that the US government is really a big disappointment. The peoples on the other hand are in general hard working, smart and frustrated by their government.
Seems we'd have answers to a lot more questions if we could get a printed history of President Obama and his past.
All the State of Alaska (no doubt in collaboration with Palin) will achieve is that there is now a solid determination to mine the data for any mud..
Insert
Try to limit the distribution of the e-mails. It would require fewer resources to release the originals, but then everyone in the world could have full access to them in 24 hours or less.
So instead they print them out in the hopes that:
A) It will slow down the flow of Palin BS hitting the news.
B) That it will go unnoticed if a few e-mails are missing.
Now I see where Sarah Palin gets her sneering, snarky attitude from.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The poor dude that had to click the Print button 24000 times in Outlook...
Its only one letter per page..
"THE POLICE HAVE REQUESTED ALL FILES UNDER DIRECTORY TITLE RAND.
'Dump it for them at 300 baud.'"
Niven and Pournelle, Oath of Fealty, 1982.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
IAAL, and indeed it is a common trick to print emails, but only morons who don't understand discovery fall for it.
You always have a right to and demand the electronic version because, as everyone on Slashdot knows, there is a lot of extra useful information in the headers (that doesn't normally print) that helps you to authenticate who really sent the email, where it was sent from, the actual time sent, etc. etc. I had a case where it was critical to show that the email had gone through a server in Manilla, which my forensic experts were able to determine from the header information.
The real story here is that they are trying to hide the header information. And they might have an argument why, i.e. that 'in order to provide the electronic version we would have to vet the header information email by email to make sure it is not revealing something about or systems that would aid hackers, disclose confidential information, etc.' Thus, printing the emails is less burdensome than the effort needed to vet the header information in order to provide it electronically.
Bullshit or course, but that might be the argument.
Where did the state say this? The word "impractical" appears nowhere in TFA. What they're doing is still absurd, but that's no reason to misquote them.
Former state employee here. Not sure how relevant this might be the pain in the ass that their email archive system especially with regards to searching. They dumped their previous system precisely because it wasn't searching properly, but the migration to the new system was plagued with issues that a variety of contractors seemed unable to completely fix while I was there.
Apply it to all Presidents and Vice Presidents. Exclude issues of national security. This would be fair to all parties. If you wanted a greater degree of fairness, extend it to all state and federal officials.
It's amazing how the Liberal Media and the Educated Fools who claim that Palin is such an idiot and not worth their attention devote so much of their time and emotional energy trying to destroy her. She ignores them and runs circles around them and they follow her around like a bunch of obsessed paparazzi who are angry and bitter that she refuses to participate in her own destruction. She refuses to play their game and smiles as they run around making fools of themselves.
What amazes me is the time the liberal turds waste trying to discredit Palin.. 90% dont even know why they dont like her and 100% do not realize that she's just a small fry in the competition.
Cain 2012
So the real news here is that the cost of paper, printer ink, & workers to reformat the data, add up to less than the cost of copy-n-pasting files or even attaching the files to an email.
that the originals were printed, a lawyer reviewed the paper copies and redacted those items the lawyer felt were required by law to be removed, and then the most convenient way for the redacted versions to be distributed was by photocopy. Too much time and expense to the taxpayers of AK to have the hand redacted items edited into the online versions for later transmission. And too much trouble to scan the redacted paper into electronic format. Plus there is the profit motive of selling photocopies rather than a one time file transfer which then every one manipulates.
How about usnig an OCR solution to re-digitize those emails? I've got a copier here at work which would do this job in less than an hour.
little evidence. Apparently some of the emails contain personal information about employees and that information needs to be redacted by law. Additionally, communiques between the Governor and her direct staff are protected as well.
You like this http://tinyurl.com/4yn3fuq
And yet, if you try to pay a bill in with US legal tender in the form of pennies...
Wahhhh my witch hunt isnt being made easy for me!
They figured it would be easier to print them out and go through them with a black marker than edit the text files.
Why weren't all these new organizations clamoring to read the health care bill?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I feel sorry for them, because these must be some whopper emails that will embarrass the entire State, and probably the entire country for making such a fuss about her. I imagine its going to be an epic wikileaks dump of some very funny stuff. It will be a hoot at first, then it will become sad, and at long last just fade into some mythic joke.
I am kind of sad this came out, I was hoping to see Sara and Hilary have a debate. Caribou Barbie vs Darth Hilary. /popcorn
Take the Red Pill.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43281157/ns/politics-more_politics/?gt1=43001
MSNBC is claiming that they'll be converting the files over to electronic format, and that they'll be available and searchable there.
the unbelievable extent of which the press and many in media in general go to such extremes to get one person. They have spent more energy examining a failed candidate for Vice President than any other politician in history that I can recall. Reading across various blogs and so many hate filled people are nearly orgasmic over this release of documents.
What is it that gives people the feeling that there are no limits in character assassination? Where is the in depth research in the guy that got elected? You can't jack shit about him without being declared a racist yet you can attack a woman with impunity.
What we are seeing and many here are jumping up and down with joy over is the full power of a political machine (its both sides) and their press and other media sycophants stomping on something beyond their control.
People lament all the time, if there were only a choice, if only we didn't have to vote for X or Y. Yet we get a group out there and candidates; and no I would never vote for her either; and all that seems to happen here is vilification to the nth degree.
and you wonder why we are stuck with the D and R on our ballots. Your being told to go ballistic and forgo any sense of human decency and your enjoying it. Keep up the goosestep.
Those of us who are true Libertarians know when we see a politically driven lynch mob. We have had to put up with the pot head claims by the right and the kick the kids to the streets by the left for a long time. Far too many of you don't deserve better than you got now.
Paper format also makes it easier to hide anything that has been 'lost' in the printing-to-paper process.
You stereotypers are all the same...
But 8th generation photocopies of draft printouts in a horrible font. They just want to make this a huge PITA.
I thought the point of printing them out was to allow for effective redacting of sensitive information? I read recently that the Alaskan officials didn't think they could properly redact in the original electronic documents.
Of course, they could print out, redact with Sharpie, then rescan the page image to PDF (making it much larger than it should be, of course), but that last step is time-consuming.
(No, I haven't yet RTFA)
Latest news: Anonymous activists broke into Alaska government offices, turned on a photo copier, and copied 24,000 pages of e-mails. They escaped using a fleet of 20 dogsleds.
Give them 5 seconds at the system that holds the files and I guarantee you it'd be on a torrent within minutes.
While your comments about the Richelieu quote are basically correct there is a totally different issue at the heart of the matter.
A forgery in an electronic media can be easily detected. Even if there are not ways to prevent a forgery it can easily be detected by taking the alleged forgery and doing an electronic search through the 24,000 pages of the original disclosure to see if it can be found in it. If it can't be found, it probably is a forgery.
Now take the paper version of the original documents that they released. These are printed copies and probably use a generic print font. As such, a forgery using the same font can be produced. Yes, it will eventually be found to be a forgery, but by the time that mountain of printed documents is entirely read it will b e too late. The forgery will have time to take on a life of its own. That is the issue, it will take much more time to detect a forgery on paper than in an electronic document.
Seriously- put them on a usb drive.
Give them to a news organization with bandwidth to distribute them.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
What they mean is: "It is too difficult to redact 80% of the 24,000 pages of emails in electronic format"
They are going to print out the 24,000 pages, go through with a Sharpie and redact most of them. Copy and distribute.
I live in Alaska and have on and off since 1983. Juneau became the capital back when Alaska was a territory and received 90% of its goods and services from Seattle via the sea. Hence the capital being close to Seattle and on the water. All that made since back on 1900 but ever since we became a state and our population began to grow the more centrally located Southcentral and the Interior parts of the state have eclipsed Juneau and its environs. Begin 50 years ago through today the pressure been mounting to move the capital to Anchorage or Fairbanks where the majority of people live and work. Palin escalated the conflict by refusing to move to the govenor's mansion in Juneau and deciding instead to live in Wasilla. This made Juneau even more paranoid about its future prospects as the capital. Juneau's future is in doubt as the polical and cultural center of the state and they know it. This is a purely calculated move to get dollars and attention funnelled to Juneau. Everyone who want's the Palin email archive needs to buy an airline ticket, stay in a hotel, eat at local restaurants, maybe see the sites (it's a beautiful place) and buy their own printed and bound copy of "the book". It's not a conspiracy to defraud justice (they don't much like her for the above mentioned mansion stunt) but a cold calculated move on cash. It's that simple.
I will not vote for Palin, but it's pathetic how low liberals have stooped to destroy her image.
90% of the "stupid" things she's "said" were either not said by her ("I can see Russia from my house"), or ended up not being stupid at all (1773, Paul Revere). The other 10% are comparable with things Obama has said (57 states, or pretty much any time he speaks without a teleprompter).
The libs are desperate for dirt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/help-analyze-the-palin-emails/2011/06/08/AGZAaHNH_blog.html
That's a writer for the Washington Post. How pathetic is that? Organized muckraking, with no reason to believe they'll find anything. It's desperate, and they don't see how pathetic it is.
Do you honestly believe that Alaska believes that paper-only e-mails will actually help hide information? They aren't that dumb. They are doing it this way because they honestly believe they have a legitimate reason for doing so. I don't know what that reason is, but they know very well that paper won't hide anything.
Do any of you expect a similar reaction over Obama's Senate e-mails being released? Will that same writer for the Washington Post ask his readers to comb through them? For some reason I doubt it.
Think about it this way, though: wouldn't the best defense against that be to actually just comply and make those emails public, and cryptographically signed by a 3'rd party? I mean, if soneone is going to spin things out of context, they're just going to find something to spin out of context. It seems to me like being able to point at the context and have everyone able to check for themselves, is the best way to kill most people's belief in conspiracy theories.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Is everyone in Alaska's government as stupid as Sarah Palin?
Think a bit - if it were electronic it could be hacked - if hacked changed - if changed deniable - since hypothetically true if it were electronic is would be plausibly deniable - So-o-o-o, we have it on HARD COPY only - official - undeniable - GOTCHA!!
The 2,000 witheld ones are the ones actually written by Palin. The 24,000 were written by an aide why she played Deer Hunter all day.
In this age of eco-awareness, someone needs to call them out on the fact that this is about the most environmentally unfriendly way to go about dealing with this issue.
Granted, I realize there's a lot of spite here and a desire to really thumb their noses at everyone who wants to get a look at these emails. But seriously? 24,000 pages of digital emails, printed to hard copy and packaged up, which then need to be picked up in person. That means that someone needs to fly to this place in the middle of nowhere, then (according to the article) either catch another plane or a friggin' boat to actually pick this stuff up. Then 24,000 pages of emails need to be transported back to whatever news organization bought them and, again wasting fuel and resources.
And that's per request. What's the carbon footprint of this idiocy?
The state (no city, state, etc) government can not release the raw emails. Each had to be reviewed and redacted where needed. The process will typically involve printing the emails, reading them, redacting, and copying. If you want to make some money, create a better workflow for municipalities who need to meet FOIA requests.
Too many goddamn trees in Alaska, this will at least get rid of a few.
Brilliant!
Yes but reading those emails is like looking directly at the sun... with your brain.
Its a public service really keeping them from the light of day...
Two faced hypocrisy is almost as much of a given from a teabagger as bigotry and willful ignorance.
To take her out... tells us so much...
Good luck in 2012.
Ah, he, who warned the .uk suffix types that they weren't gonna be takin' away our headers, uh, by sendin' those packets and, um, makin' sure as he's sendin' his stateful ensembles through tubes, to send those warnin' packets each containin' a message body sayin' that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free!
Better yet, where's Obama's college records?
WikiLeaks won't touch that one I bet.
24,000 pages?
A lot of e-mail text wraps at about 70 characters. So then times, I dunno, 50-60 lines on standard 8.5 x 11 with typical margins and a 10 point font? Let's say 70 lines.
At 70 characters times 70 lines is 4900. Almost 5KB in raw text per page. Multiplied times 24,000 and we get about 120 MB in raw text.
That's a rough estimate of what the data capture should look like for the raw text as it comes back in via OCR (lol!) from scanning the fucking printouts back in.
But even if there WERE gigantic attachments, and all sorts of prettyful stationary, and copious MS Office metadata, I doubt the data would excede 16 GB in size.
So what could possible cost any money? Scrubbing the data? Encrypting it?
My guess is that combing through the e-mails and *ahem!* redacting "sensitive" data would be UNIMAGINABLY costly...