Saturday, July 17, 2010: 8:00 pm (Tesla): Phil Lapsley and Michael Ravnitzky 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.