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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?
Palin's emails were all in comic-sans. No idea how well Google's OCR would work on that...
Trolling is a art,
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.
Maybe she actually IS the sharpest tool in that drawer.
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.
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.
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).
That's like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Or maybe something Woody Allen or Mel Brooks would come up with.
1. 2.
I was with you until the pointless misogyny at the end of your post.
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.
I think the point everyone is trying to make is that they were electronic in the first place. Along the way, the state turned them into paper versions. Legally, the state knows that they have to release them under freedom of information laws and they can no longer delay. That doesn't mean they will make it easy.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'
All presidential records will become public no more than 12 years after the president in question leaves office, according to the Presidential Records Act. So whether "the media" ever looks at Obama's emails, you'll be able to to your heart's content.
I am officially gone from
The state said it was not practical to provide electronic versions of the emails.
Unless you're being a complete tool, the phrases "not practical" and "impractical" can be considered the same thing.
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...
Yeah, because the Palin-bots are so clever with the 'look-over-there-instead' gambit. No college perfesser type can withstand its subtle twist on the false equivalence fallacy. And it hasn't even been tried in other Internet forums than this one.
Now come back and say "Well, I'm no Sarah fan, but ...". That'll really suck 'em in.
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Try to post your tax-form as a binary printout of zeroes and ones, because "it's more practical".