Friday, July 18, 2008: 5:00 pm (Hopper): As part of his book on the history of phone phreaking, Phil Lapsley submitted hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to various three-letter government agencies. In this talk he will give an overview of how FOIA works, describe the type of documents you can get via FOIA, and discuss some of the typical FOIA stumbling blocks and workarounds to them. He will then focus on FOIA from a "hacker's perspective" and will examine the recent launch of several FOIA/hacker related websites such as GetGrandpasFBIFile.Com, GetMyFBIFile.Com., TvShowComplaints.Org, UnsecureFlight.Com, WhatDoTheyKnow.Com, and GovernmentAttic.Com.