It also raises more questions about Palin's record of commingling the official and personal. The Yahoo inbox posted on the Internet contained family photos, notes from well-wishers and official state correspondence on pending legislation. "She had a number of personal addresses," said John Bitney, a former close aide who was fired by Palin. "I don't know why so many."
ITS technician Ryan Gattis described working with Bailey this spring to set up e-mail addresses linked to the dormant campaign Web site. Gattis said there appeared to be 10 to 15 addresses, chiefly the small circle of aides known in Alaska political circles as "Palinistas" for their fierce loyalty to Palin, with Bailey taking system administrator authority.
"They just wanted an e-mail system that they had control over," Gattis said. He said Bailey also inquired about options for encrypting e-mails but was discouraged by the $1,000 price tag of a commercial encryption product the technician recommended. |WaPo|
In case you were wondering, yes, the first dude is a Palinista.
Alaska has pretty strong open records law, so under normal circumstances the governor's email might be the sort of thing you could FOIA. That is, it would seem to fit the definition of a public record.
(6) "record" means any document, paper, book, letter, drawing, map, plat, photo, photographic file, motion picture film, microfilm, microphotograph, exhibit, magnetic or paper tape, punched card, electronic record, or other document of any other material, regardless of physical form or characteristic, developed or received under law or in connection with the transaction of official business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by an agency or a political subdivision, as evidence of the organization, function, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the state or political subdivision or because of the informational value in them; the term does not include library and museum material developed or acquired and preserved solely for reference, historical, or exhibition purposes, extra copies of documents preserved solely for convenience of reference, or stocks of publications and processed documents; |AS 40.21.150|
Naturally, the spin is that Palin was being extra careful to keep personal and private separate. So the idea is that these emails would be purely personal -- having to do, say, with fundraising. Fair enough. I don't want to pry, and will have no objections once an officer of the court has reviewed the emails in camera and found them to be purely personal.
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