Slashdot Mirror
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?
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."
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.
They're electronic mail. E-mail. They are in electronic form to begin with. The state is already online or else e-mail wouldn't be in use. WTF is the difficulty here? What's the good, solid, gee-golly-just-no-way-around-it reason for this?
Is this like those Baby Boomer MBA managers who, despite sitting at a decent computer workstation, still insist on having their secretary print out each of their memos and e-mails? For no good reason except they just really hate trees or something?
(Note, any "eyestrain" arguments can be answered with two words: LCD panels. At least if you know anything about how they differ from a CRT. If you don't, why the hell are you commenting about them?)
It's almost as though somebody knows that they are legally obligated to release certain documents; but also knows that the law nowhere requires that they remove the gigantic stick from their ass before doing so(plus, public records laws often allow some sort of cost recovery fee, so printing them all out will allow you to stick it to those uppity 'journalists' and their 'transparency' to a much greater extent...)
.pst; but electronic and easily internet-transmissible at least). The bitter; but legally obligated, records handling person then presumably took over...
I'm strongly suspecting that, unless s/he happens to be a kool-aid drinking Palinista, the relevant IT person probably yawned and had the stuff packaged up in 20 minutes(probably in an Outlook 2003
I was with you until the pointless misogyny at the end of your post.
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.
running around and making fools of the media.
Is that what she's doing? I thought she was making fools of herself, her family, and her followers.
And, of course, as a conservative (NON-Republican), I see this as just another case of Big Government ignoring the spirit of the law and not doing the will of the people. Let me add this little bit of "fuck you, voters!" to the list of reasons why none of these people can be trusted.
And the fact that your buddies Cain, Perry, and Bachman are too terrified to criticize this move speaks volumes for their principles and priorities.
They're public records. EVERYONE has business inquiring into this stuff.
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...
Good looking? Perhaps.
Intelligent? Anything but.
Demonstrated ability to run a government? She ran:
* A state with the population of a mid-sized urban area,
* Where the residents pay no taxes and in fact are paid by the state to live there,
* For less than two years.
Cake, meet walk.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!