Senior Execs' Secret Email Addresses Offered for $1 Million -- Briefly

The Associated Press filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the secret email addresses of appointed administration employees, and a Labor Department spokesman came back with an offer: you can have the emails if you give us a million bucks. 

The AP tried to get the alternate addresses — being used by a variety government officials "to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages" — after an Environmental Protection Agency administrator disclosed using separate email accounts for work last year. But the government was hesitant because, as spokespeople for Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services insisted, the accounts are necessary for government officials to do their jobs efficiently. After the AP filed the FOIA requests, they were met with this: 

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.