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?

Comments

It's pretty simple

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:It's pretty simple

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...)

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 .pst; but electronic and easily internet-transmissible at least). The bitter; but legally obligated, records handling person then presumably took over...

Re:It's pretty simple

[nomadic]

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

Re:It's pretty simple

[tedgyz]

Maybe we should ask the Russians to grab a copy. They are real close.

Re:It's pretty simple

[uniquename72]

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.

Re:Dear Google

[grub]

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

Striesand Effect

[ozmanjusri]

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...

Well, of course.

[Ieshan]

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.

Re:WTF?

[webmistressrachel]

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.

Re:WTF?

[TheGratefulNet]

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.

Sharpest tool?

[dccase]

Maybe she actually IS the sharpest tool in that drawer.

How do we handle government lies like this?

[erroneus]

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.

Re:How do we handle government lies like this?

[Monchanger]

How do we handle government lies like this?

Simple. You sue the state in court, just as if they had declined the FOIA requests outright. That's what the judicial branch is for- limiting the ability of the state to abuse its power.

Unless the judges there are completely corrupt, they would force at least a reasonable argument about why the state made the decisions to go with paper and in-person delivery (because they'd be ruled against with this idiotic claim), if not force the governor to release everything digitally.

Between the major newspapers and cable news outlets, the cost and effort would be minimal. All we need is competent journalism, which includes knowing the difference between things that really matter and the bullcrap which comprises most Palin-related "news".

...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 legislation is already there. FOIA and related disclosure laws are thankfully in-place, though perhaps not as tough as we citizens would like. Trying to get better versions of the legislation is IMO a waste of time. Rather, I'd check out various campaign-reform groups, such as Lawrence Lessig's, and perhaps third-party/independent candidates.

Who wants to fly to Alaska to file a lawsuit

[stating_the_obvious]

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).

Re:WTF?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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

[Moraelin]

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.

Common legal trick

[caseih]

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.

Re:WTF?

[cthlptlk]

yet another red warning light that the revolution needs to happen and happen soon.

The revolution happened. We lost.

I can hear the conversation right now

[monoqlith]

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.

How much are they hiding?

[Radtastic]

Paper format also makes it easier to hide anything that has been 'lost' in the printing-to-paper process.