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Crowdsourcing Analysis of the Palin Email Trove
itwbennett writes "Surely you've got better things to do this weekend than read 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's email. But just in case you don't, the NY Times is looking for volunteers to help 'identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight.' And, for your easy reference, MSNBC has posted the complete collection online."
So wait, we're supposed to do analysis for free for the NYT, which will then hide said work behind their paywall? Yeah, suuuure.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
...because it has been -REDACTED-
Ok, we have a media frenzy about a 1/2 term governor of Alaska who was an unsuccessful candidate for VP. Gotta examine every last email she ever typed.
Meanwhile we have a POTUS where we know almost nothing of his history other than a ghostwritten highly fictionalized (read the intro in the damned thing, it is fictionalized) autobiography. All of his IL Senate records are 'missing', all of his records from Columbia and Harvard are sealed and the media are totally incurious about this. We don't know how the hell a community organizer paid the freight to get a degree at Harvard, not exactly known for it's low low prices. We know almost nothing of his community organizing days with Alinsky founded organizations and with ACORN.
Democrat delenda est
since the National Archives will do it for them.
That neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post will do this with Obama's emails once he leaves office.
I guess it depends if Obama adds a shroud of conspiracy by forcing the media to pick up the emails printed on paper instead of digitally...
Eh, it was her 5th kid. By then it's pretty much show up at the hospital and pop one out and you're done.
Palin had a son (Trig) and a grandson (Tripp) born in the same year? Most people would think that's crazy.
It's a pretty standard practice for every administration/public official. If you want the docs, you get 'em. And not for 15 million either. ;) So yes, it was done for Clinton, it was done for Bush, it'll be done for Obama... but I don't know if that means that the media is Liberal or Fair and Balanced.
His question is legit. Hey, everyone knew Bush's grades but no one cares about Obama's grades? (We only know learned that Gore got a "D" in natural science.) They dug into Jack Ryan's sealed divorce decree when he was running for Senate in Illinois but have no time to bother digging into our current president? The press is complete hypocrisy.
After #2 was born around 0100, I passed out completely. My wife was wide awake, did her all-important FaceBook postings, did some writing, even got up and walked around. This was in stark contrast to #1, where she was virtually bed-ridden for the first week.
What is it you think happens during a birth that would prevent this? It seems quite normal to me.
I searched LOL to start with. Sarah Palin certainly doesn't think highly of Jay Ramras (the comments about keeping young uns away from him in particular made me chuckle).
No thanks I'm pretty sure reading Sarah Palin's emails would lower my IQ by a factor of ten.
And people care about some moron congressman tweeting his penis and dumb Sarah Palin. Glad to know the media is focusing on what is important.
My wife came home and cleaned the kitchen. Women aren't always delicate little puffs.
We've sort of moved from a more unified main stream media model to something a little like the opposed advocacy sort of model used in legal proceedings. If it's not something MSNBC will take time to trawl through, Fox pobably will. And vice verse. etc, through the permutations.
And if neither of them get round to it, the opposition research people of the respective opposed parties or primary candidates will.
Did the NYTimes put out the same crowdsourcing call for various Wikileaks docs?
Also, is there any particular reason Palin's emails have been released? Do all governors' emails get released? (Don't know.) And George W's?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I can't wait for people to cite these e-mails as evidence of wrongdoing on her part just because they were released. Look what happened when Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell's son hacked Sarah Palin's e-mail account. To this day, people claim that David Kernell's hack proved wrongdoing on Palin's part, even after Kernell told 4chan that he DIDN'T find anything interesting.
My wife came home and cleaned the kitchen. Women aren't always delicate little puffs.
I bet you got big brownie points for that one....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Need I say more?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The reason it took them 3 years to release the emails is it took that long to screen out all the damaging material. Palin switched to her private email accounts for all the juicy stuff and she was pretty disciplined about it on top of that. We've got some indications of conversations since emails to those accounts both from and to official aides have been released. I heard on the news last night from the Mother Jones reporter who initiated the email request that stuff like conversations with Cheney and "Same Sex" thread have been completely redacted.
You think they'd wait 3 years, dump the emails ONLY to printed paper, redact the hell out of the content, and charge people if they *really* wanted to give you access?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The whole Palin phenomena seems to be a huge troll whose sole intention is to divert attention from important issues at hand. Don't concentrate on the invasion, war, poverty, theft, corruption and the gathering of international criminals.
Instead, concentrate your attention on the glorified village idiot that is Palin.
1. encrypt your back up file.
2. Email it to them.
3. FOI the date.
What am I missing?
If it was a threat, they would have to sit and decrypt it anyway.
I stumbled upon something interesting there
That you're a manipulated tool?
Remember the conspiracies around Trig's birth, April 18, 2008?
Uh, no. But now you're scaring us...
I found this one interesting: http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/5351.pdf
right on... glad he acknowledged his mistake. pis tell him i appreciate his acknowledgment
Although she's not acknowledging one of her mistakes I was surprised to find out that she was even familiar with the concept.
unless he was out hunting bears
"and the kids dressed up as moose nuggets"
What surprises me is that it's been almost a day and we don't have a giant first page headlines "WE CONFIRMED SHE IS EVIL! Email details ... ". Nothing beyond regular (and sometimes understandable) stuff.
Which probably will result in more conspiracy theory to the tune of "Well we know She's Evil, it's just only those months of emails that weren't released must contain the Pure Evilness!", which is kinda silly.
I think every governor should have emails released, frankly, before he/she leaves office. The whole transparency thing, people love to talk about so much (but never deliver). That way someone who's about to become a public official will know that the public will see all communication for sure, without a need to file information requests (plus some states don't seem to care much to store the data as long as Alaska does). It will probably disrupt their "ability to negotiate" (like releasing the list of people who visit the White House) but isn't transparency worth it?
Hyperom.com
I'm assuming neither you (if female) nor your wife (if you have one) have ever given birth?
Really? Sarah Palin who is really a joke and non-issue? The New York Times who wants you to pay for their news? This is science and technology? Wow. "Celebrity" smear news? I think the IQ for the ./ readership is dropping faster than the "value" of "bitcoin" articles.
Furthermore, even though I think Sarah Palin is an idiot, the liberal bias on this site is just unreal. Ya, I'll probably take mod hits but the truth is the truth. This is lame.
Maybe I missed something somehow but is there a reason there's a desire to peruse through these records? If there's an investigation going on then it's not my job. If there isn't then it's none of my damned business and I have better shit to do with my time than be a voyeur to someone like Palin. Send this waste of time to the tabloids.
At first I thought this would be a good application for some sort of Artificial Intelligence processing engine, but 'Artificial Intelligence' probably doesn't work well on itself.
So Obama got into Harvard for the sake of diversity (affirmative action), and then graduated at the top 10% of his class, magna cum luade.
Barack Obama must have somehow used his black powers to graduate at the top of his class.
Luckily your racist idiot powers remind us that he's just another affirmative action nigger.
What do you call a nigger who graduates magna cum laude and is elected president of the United States? A "diversity" admission. Well... that's what racists call him anyway.
...used to manifest itself as Bush Derangement Syndrome; which has morphed into Palin Derangement Syndrome
She passes off everything to other people.... Good for a laugh as always.
For instance, was her e-mail.
So Obama got into Harvard for the sake of diversity (affirmative action), and then graduated at the top 10% of his class, magna cum luade.
Barack Obama must have somehow used his black powers to graduate at the top of his class.
Luckily your racist idiot powers remind us that he's just another affirmative action nigger.
What do you call a nigger who graduates magna cum laude and is elected president of the United States? A "diversity" admission.
Well... that's what racists call him anyway.
Did they do this for Climategate emails?
You seem to be lost. This is Slashdot, not Digg. When we agree with somebody, we don't say that we "dug" their post.
it would be advisable to let her. When my wife had our kids, some strange nesting instinct seems to have kicked in. Trying to stop her would have not been healthy.
While I personally dislike Palin, can someone with mod points please moderate the parent as -1: Idiot! ? Thank you.
AccountKiller
While I find the farce surrouding the opposing forces of Palin's cult of personality and those who simply cannot stomach her and will dig through anything to justify that to be tedious and misguided, we should not let that distract us from the potential real issues at play here.
Alaska is, perhaps uniquely among American states in the present day(with the possible exception of the poorer; but much more overtly corrupt Appalacian coal belt), a state with an immensely lucrative extraction-economy, and not too much else going on. This means that there is considerable money to be made in controlling pipeline contracts and routes, security assorted extraction licenses, controlling obscure planning offices, and other tedious activity in sparsely settled areas. Although much more scenic than most, and often less violent, this does leave it open to many of the same dysfunctional political dynamics enjoyed by the poor nations who have large mineral reserves and weak governance.
We shouldn't forget that. It doesn't matter what the contents of Palin's Office Yahoo Account tell us about who popped out out a baby when. Sordid trailer-park drama? probably, but who cares? However, it is generally the case that, behind every folksy politician who is bored by the details, lurks a small army of value-rational and detail-oriented hatchetmen quietly cleaning up the spoils. Sometimes, if the local cult of personality is strong enough, they are in thrall of that politician. In other cases, the politician is their frontman. In either case, though, their activities are the stuff that desperately needs as much sunlight(and cell space) as the public can devote to it. Don't let the personality drama get in the way.
Or anything, really, except US partisan politics?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
From: Sarah Palin
To: Frank Bailey; Sharon Leighow; Beth Leschper; Kristina Perry; Talis Colberg
Subject: Re: Fw: fyi-Chicken-pox immunization regulations
Thanks - the Lt. Governor's release will hopefully clarify. I'll ask Talis to [REDACTED]
From: Frank Bailey
To: Sarah Palin; Sharon Leighow; Beth Leschper; Kristina Perry
Subject: Re: Fw: fyi-Chicken-pox immunization regulations
We can try to get this word out. I believe Gail Neubrugge's grandaughter (?) was severely disabled by a vaccine. Dan Saddler's pretty sharp on this issue as well. This'll be a tough pill for some folks.
From: Sarah Palin
To: Sean Parnell, Mike Tibbles
Subject: Re: fyi-Chicken-pox immunization regulations
[REDACTED]
From: Sean Parnell
To: Mike Tibbles
Cc: Sarah Palin
Subject: fyi-Chicken-pox immunization regulations
We received a regulations packet from the Board of Ed in which they mandate immunizations against chicken-pox for kids in school beginning July 1, 2009. [REDACTED]
"Sarah Palin's emails have created more jobs than the last $2 trillion in federal stimulus." -- David Burge
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Oh, ...that's right... they're either sealed or burned.
Right or wrong, I've long ago made up my mind that Palin is a skanky ole ho, who is just getting by on her history as a beauty queen. I've not read anything to make me like her, and I've read plenty to make me dislike her.
I can't see that sifting through her emails is going to improve my opinion of the ole ho. Like most other people, I'll just interpret the crap I find to reinforce my current opinion.
'Course, most other people can't admit that they'll do that, LMAO!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"crowd-sourcing" this is a gimmick. There's only 24k pages and they've already been scanned. OCR them and run them through some decent e-discovery software - maybe do some concept searching, sentiment analysis. Crowd-sourcing will get you attention, but it's a slow way to get to the goodies.
Seems we'd have answers to a lot more questions if we could get a printed history of President Obama and his past.
Get over it.
This is why this whole Palin frenzy is so damn distressing. She isn't even declared as a candidate for the next election yet it seems as if the line to be part of the character assassination just continues to grow. This is like taking the worst aspects of Reality TV and having the press and politicians play the parts.
If they even tried this with Obama there would be lines of people screaming racism. That alone allows Libya to continue and Yemen to be next. I wonder how many years after Obama leaves office before someone will have the courage/be allowed to investigate him. We can destroy women; Hillary really didn't get good treatment from the press either once they crowned Obama their pick, but guys seem to get a free pass in politics, doubly so if they can hide behind an army of sycophants.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's cause she is a woman.. plain and simple.
Anonymous already released her email into the wild back when anyone cared, and didn't redact anything in the process.
I wrote a script to get all the pdfs. Unfortunately some of those docs are not available. hmm.
Here's the script and give it a whirl.
$myFirst = 5082;
for ($i = 0; $i 12045; $i++) {
$docNum = $myFirst + $i;
$tmpCommand = "wget http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/" . $docNum . ".pdf";
print $tmpCommand . "\n";
system($tmpCommand);
}
wget http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/5390.pdf
--2011-06-11 14:39:55-- http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/5390.pdf
Resolving palinemail.msnbc.msn.com... 216.246.75.120, 216.246.75.152
Connecting to palinemail.msnbc.msn.com|216.246.75.120|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2011-06-11 14:39:55 ERROR 404: Not Found.
wget http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/5391.pdf
--2011-06-11 14:39:55-- http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com/palin2011/pdf/5391.pdf
Resolving palinemail.msnbc.msn.com... 216.246.75.152, 216.246.75.120
Connecting to palinemail.msnbc.msn.com|216.246.75.152|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2011-06-11 14:39:56 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Nope.
You publish it on your no-name blog first, then you get the delicious protections of the new copyright regime!
(That is, until they cheat again.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Don't expect anything to come from "Crowdsourcing", as they've made it nearly impossible to navigate.
For instance, you cannot go to a document at random, you have to page through the entire collection 10 links at a time. Sure, I'll be happy to hit "NEXT" 200 times and wait 5 seconds each to get somewhere in the middle because my time isn't valuable and I'm happy to give it to the NYT.
Some of us geeks have experience in getting redacted information out of documents, and there would be quite a bit of motivation to look into this... oh, right-click is disabled, everything has been scanned and put into PDF format. No joy there.
All the public can do is read the words, and then only on the first few easy-to-get-to pages.
This is just the NYT getting the public to do its Mechanical Turk work for free.
You have two pathetic loser medals now.
The first, for spending any time going through the emails and the second, for being part of the Trig Conspiracy crowd.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
She has nice boobs. Obama do not. So you can do racy story and juicy low cut photo with her. With Obama you can. Hu. Make a stateroom photo.
Back in the old days women would be working in the fields, stop and give birth, wrap the baby up, and go back to working. It's not that hard to believe a woman could use a computer or phone hours after giving birth.
You people are grasping at straws . . . . as usual.
I see this as some media outlets trying to make a buck by riding the 'Wikileaks Wave'.
The people seem to be eating this up, too.
It may be due to the lack of transparency with our gov't until wikileaks spilled the beans.
I agree this does not seem to be the most efficient method to 'get to the goodies', but I don't think that is the point of this.
Just a thought....
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Then post just the text of the diff out of context!
Heheh, stirrin' mud puddles with my 200 hp Evinrude! ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Palin didn't release these until she was required to. Why do you hold Obama to a different standard?
This is just a lot of pathetic people spasming about emails of a person they have chosen to hate, even more than bin Laden et al, and for that matter GW Bush. Why? Because it's easier to hate than buy themselves a big Mac. Basically, these haters are just a bunch of neo-trailer trash who've found a new "reality show."
What a pack of losers.
The Democrats could not be bothered to read the 2400 page health care bill but everyone is all over Palin's 24,000 pages of useless e-mails?
I thought She was irrelevant and the left was "so over her" yet they hang on every word and action She does.
So very sad.
The problem is that by choosing a method of release that can ONLY be explained as an attempt to frustrate process they have drawn far more attention to those emails than they would otherwise deserve.
The emails are in electronic form, that's what the "e" in email stands for, so why choose a release method which (a) requires work to make it this unfriendly, (b) removes essential tracking data, (c) costs FAR more than is needed and (d) forces people to travel to a place that isn't quite connected with the world? Personally, I'd rank that as willful obstruction of democratic oversight.
I doubt there is a another release method possible that will arouse more suspicion of dodgy dealing than what they have chosen. However, I suspect that direct data is missing (after all, they were allowed to leave a few things out - I actually have no idea who checks what they removed) - any meat will come from correlation.
Does this involve "hating Sarah Palin"? No - but it may involve hating deliberate obstruction. To recall a phrase much used during the Bush era: what does she have to hide?
I am very suspicious of this approach to information release - it appears to be specifically aimed at obfuscation to frustrate analysis. If you look at it from an audit/forensics point of view because the raw data has been converted, so it can no longer be considered clean or reliable. I'd call this actually NON-compliance with a process designed to keep government accountable, and it ought to raise serious question.
At the most basic technical level, there is no way to check authenticity or look at the headers. This stunt ought to be challenged so it doesn't happen again - it has zero to do with Palin or political direction, but everything with accountability.
Insert
Most people don't know that 12 > 9? Perhaps where you come from...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't get it. Even if she does run for office again, are we supposed to dig through all of the candidates emails?
Wait, don't they pay people to do this kind of stuff? Yeah, I want to get paid before I start to do the work that you would only hire a 'trained, qualified journalist' to do at the interview.
The left wing media are assholes to Palin so AK figured they would return the favor. The most complex answer is rarely the correct one.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Pathetic media, this opinioin article on CNN just about sums up the truth. (Which is suprising to find on CNN.) http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/11/welch.palin.email/index.html?hpt=hp_c2&is_LR=1
In the past few years I have seen Slashdot go from a group of somewhat biased, but thoughtful group to zombie mob of hacks. Palin is likely smarter than half the people who post on this forum. I don't even like Palin all that much, but a normal citizen works their way up the political chain and it seems by all accounts she has done a good job and you all hate her for it? What is wrong with you people?
Remember the quote "I can see Russia from my house."? Yeah, that was a great SNL skit, but Palin didn't really say that or anything like it.
The Paul Revere scandal, guess what, even a historian on Paul Revere said she was "technically correct".
You have a congressman who is the equivalent of a flashing pervert and everyone defends him to the hill, but some woman from AK wants to make a difference in the country and everyone froths at the mouth like rabid dogs.
You wonder why only perverts, scumbags and thieves end up in government?
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Wow, killer emphasis. Not. Clearly you missed all the "I hate Palin" zombies running around in full metal rant. As the op said, it's easier to hate than by a big Mac.
Getting bad press is part of the ticket - willful obstruction of democratic processes is not.
Following that argument would allow Washington to deposit AK's next round of state funding in large bags of single cents in the middle of a swamp - just because they were assholes. I think not..
Insert
No price here, sorry. I can agree with your point that Palin may not be as bad as portrayed (let's face it, few people are), but you don't even need to consider *Palin* to see that what has happened here is willful obstruction.
Information that is SUPPOSED to be in the public domain is released
(a) filtered (who supervises that process?)
(b) converted (what evidence is destroyed here?)
(c) in almost the least accessible place in the US (wasting money GETTING it there).
This is not cute or funny - this should be illegal. I don't care if it's Palin or anyone else, this is obstruction. Here is a simple test: could any normal US citizen afford it to exercise their right of checking up on their government? If the answer is "no" (as in this case), the release method should be declared illegal because it conflicts with the fundamental principles of checks & balances that a democracy is SUPPOSED to have.
Insert
It would be cool if someone actually read through all of her crap and reported that there was nothing newsworthy in there.