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State of Alaska Prints Out Palin's E-Mails; Online Distribution 'Impractical'

Posted by timothy on from the my-power-is-inconvenience dept.

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?

6 of 516 comments (clear)

  1. It's pretty simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do you realize how long that internet tube would have to be to reach Alaska?

    1. Re:It's pretty simple by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

      More critically, do you know how long it would take to convert e-mails into electronic format?

  2. Re:Dear Google by grub · · Score: 5, Funny

    Palin's emails were all in comic-sans. No idea how well Google's OCR would work on that...

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  3. Well, of course. by Ieshan · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Sharpest tool? by dccase · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe she actually IS the sharpest tool in that drawer.

  5. I can hear the conversation right now by monoqlith · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.