Palin demands $15m to search her own emails

Found on The Register on Friday, 17 October 2008
Browse Politics

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. (...) requests won't be honored until November 17, two weeks after the presidential election is held.

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.

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.

This is too ridiculous to be a hoax. Nobody searches an email account for 13 hours; you just dump all mails into one box and run queries. Or just release everything; after all, it's official and citizens have the right to see it if they want. In my opinion, Palin has lost her right to do any official business at all with such an attitude; and she has something to hide too.