Palin sets the price for access to her emails.

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...10/18/15m_palin_email/

Palin demands $15m to search her own emails

US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin isn't saying citizens interested in open government can't get access to her emails. She's just saying it will cost a little.

The office of the Alaska governor, which by state law is required to make such messages public, says it could cost more than $15m for anyone conducting an exhaustive search. Even then, Palin - who ran for governor on a platform of running a clean and transparent government - says requests won't be honored until November 17, two weeks after the presidential election is held.


It's fair to say that interest in Palin's email has spiked since Republican presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. Not only has her office been swamped with requests for copies of state records, but her personal Yahoo email account was breached and some of its contents were posted to the Wikileaks site.

The leak offered evidence strongly suggesting that Palin conducted official state business using the very unofficial gov.palin@yahoo.com email address. Messages sent to it bore subject headings such as "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger," "Court of Appeals Nominations" and "CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter." Critics say her use of the Yahoo account could violate Alaska open records laws that require official communications to be available to members of the public.

An Alaska state judge has ordered Palin to preserve the contents of the account.

The emails Palin's office has valued at $15m were sent by various state employees to her husband, Todd, who is not a state employee. State bean counters say it will cost $960.31 to search each employee's account. If email for all 16,000 employees are processed, the exact figure is $15,364,000.96. They figure it will take 13 hours per email account. That figure doesn't include the cost of the paper. The office will only make the email available in hard copy.

Palin may portray herself as a Washington outsider unversed in the sleights of hand politicians use to keep Joe Six-Pack from seeing what's really going on in government. But in Alaska, she knows how it's done.




15 million dollars for an email search? I swear, Palin is channeling Dick Cheney when it comes to secrecy. What is Palin hiding? What do we really know about Palin?
Isn't there someone here at ATOT who would be willing to do the search for a little less?
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
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So Palin is trying to make a personal profit off what amounts to the people of Alaska's property.
 

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: Lemon law
So Palin is trying to make a personal profit off what amounts to the people of Alaska's property.

I'm pretty sure the money goes to the State of Alaska. Though I could be wrong.
 

TheSlamma

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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With the open records act the government entity can charge for it. I know some that do like City of Englewood CO charges $500, mostly just to prevent people from doing it all the time to a point of harassment, but I know more often then not it's either free or just enough to cover the media they put the data on if it's a reasonable request.
 

Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
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Originally posted by: TheSlamma
With the open records act the government entity can charge for it. I know some that do like City of Englewood CO charges $500, mostly just to prevent people from doing it all the time to a point of harassment, but I know more often then not it's either free or just enough to cover the media they put the data on if it's a reasonable request.


Can't do that in my state. In fact, abusing the system like Palin apparently is (unreasonably high fees, unreasonable delay in production) would expose the politician to personal liability for the expense of the FOIA commission hearings to compel compliance-and the commission is not shy at all about levying those fees. We don't have that kind of nonsense here-but then again we don't have the closed government and corruption that Alaska has either. Coincidence?
 

GroundedSailor

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2001
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Its one thing to charge a reasonable amount to avoid harassment but $15 million? It would be far cheaper to sue the Governor and force the court to get the information as part of discovery.

That woman is unbelievable.