Presented at
The Next HOPE (2010),
July 17, 2010, 8 p.m.
(60 minutes)
Phil and Michael will conduct a guided tour through GovernmentAttic.org, a website that has (legally!) obtained and published hundreds of interesting government documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Based on extensive interviews with the site’s creators and through a half dozen examples they will describe some of the clever FOIA tools and techniques (hacks, in other words) that the site has employed to obtain informative, valuable, and sometimes even amusing documents and datasets from government agencies. They will also highlight similarities between the mindsets and approaches of hackers and successful FOIA requesters.
Presenters:
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Michael Ravnitzky
Michael Ravnitzky has worked as an investigative reporter, private investigator, trade association technical director, aeronautical engineer, and now serves as an attorney in the communications field. As a journalist, he broke new ground by using the Freedom of Information Act in innovative ways (having personally filed some 10,000 FOIA requests since 1992), and he continues to encourage reporters to apply these techniques to spur greater government transparency, openness, and utility. He has written a number of technical articles, the most recent being a proposal to mount mobile sensors on the national postal vehicle fleet to collect data and map parameters such as weather, pollutants, potholes, areas of weak radio signals, and perhaps even to raise alerts about chemical or biological agents. He received a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University and a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law.
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Phil Lapsley
Phil Lapsley has spent the last several years documenting the history of phone phreaking, through hundreds of interviews and Freedom of Information Act requests. He has been interviewed by National Public Radio and the BBC and quoted in multiple newspapers, including The New York Times, on the topic. He has also presented on phone phreaking history at the 10th Annual Vintage Computer Festival and The Last HOPE. When not researching phreaking, Phil has tried to act like an upstanding member of society. He cofounded two high technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked for McKinsey and Company, a management consulting company that advises Fortune 100 companies on business strategy. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He codeveloped Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP, RFC 977) used in the USENET news system. He is also the author of one textbook, 17 patents, and numerous technical articles.
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