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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,
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.
What's even more worrying is that there will be no way to prove anything was redacted or censored, or is or isn't the original unedited email. They will just release 25,000 pages of mundane drivel for journalists to pore through for months while she gets elected, but the really bad stuff was simply <SHIFT>> <DELETE> 'd before printing.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
if you or I tried to pull this shit, we'd wind up in jail for obstruction of justice.
the fact that she gets away with this means our system is broken. yet another red warning light that the revolution needs to happen and happen soon.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
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).
I was with you until the pointless misogyny at the end of your post.
I resent your assertion that I'm doing nothing. Since I discovered that China has an excellent, and amazingly inexpensive, supply of both patriot blood and(when the public is especially upset about some corruption scandal) tyrant blood, I've had my undocumented groundskeeper, Juan, out watering the tree of liberty every single day! I am the very model of a postmodern, globalized, supply-chain-optimized, revolutionary!
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.
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.
I'm fairly sure being Sarah Palin is a crime against humanity.
yet another red warning light that the revolution needs to happen and happen soon.
The revolution happened. We lost.
What did Palin "get away" with here? The state of Alaska is doing this, Sarah Palin doesn't have Bristol and Willow sitting there printing things out on the fucking family inkjet while watching Dancing with the Stars reruns.
From the article:
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.
This is just a slap to the face of the papers that are trying to embarrass Palin. Clearly, whether there's something there or not, being printed is not going to stop the papers from scavenging through it to find whatever they can.
Or inviting their readers to help them:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/help-analyze-the-palin-emails/2011/06/08/AGZAaHNH_blog.html
It's a witch hunt, plain and simple. They're looking for any type of dirt they can find. And this is why Palin isn't going to run for President. She's far more powerful as a regular person that gives her opinion about what's going on.
If Palin were the idiot that everyone makes her out to be, then why does everyone get their panties in such a bind every time she says anything about anything? You ignore the morons in Hollywood and at work when they do really stupid things (upskirt photos, getting hauled into court yet again for drunk driving, etc), but you freak out when the former Governor of Alaska says something questionable.
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...
Palin really is an idiot. She's just a political anomaly. Lemme explain what I mean. When someone tells you 3+4 = 8, you have the urge to correct them. If they're very convinced 3+4 = 8, most people will want to correct them all the more. Palin is the same way. She says stupid things with great conviction. People want to correct her, but they can't, so they do the next best thing: they talk to other people about how wrong she is, or how horrible it is that she might be a serious candidate for the presidency, or whatever is cathartic for them. This generates buzz for her, and is why I read this story and these comments in the first place. This effect is an anomaly--an unintended (to her; maybe not to people who run her or related campaigns) side effect of who she is and how she presents herself to the public. To be honest, I think she's deeply insecure and is simply defensive. Defensive people display the traits she displays: digging her heels in on issues; saying nonsensical things with great conviction; making things personal (her vs. the media). If I didn't fear her gaining office, I'd just feel sorry for her.
She also has a large base of support made up of people who relate to her as a pseudo-middle-class working mom with strong Christian beliefs and morals who's fighting against the decay they see in our society. These people tend to believe her (and, as an overt sterotype, anyone they consider authoritative) without question. These two types of people--roughly, those who want to correct her and those who believe her--bring together the traditional fights of liberal vs. conservative and religious vs. not, which is absolutely fantastic fodder for discussions, news reports, and talk radio.
Palin is an accident. She happened to tap some nerves in our society through how she behaves without her intending to. Sometimes people notice the level of emotion Palin seems to generate. That's backwards. It's actually emotion that generates Palin, politically.