Scraping Political Data - Activism & Web Hacking Techniques

This two-day workshop will introduce you to the basic philosophy behind transparency activism and how to accomplish it through the use of smart hacks over web platforms. Ownership, privacy and geopolitical use of data will be introduced through case histories of ethical and legal issues as well as an introduction of the main organizations and resources about Open Data.

You will learn the methodologies and mechanisms for exploring creative and unconventional uses of political data over the web. In addition, the workshop will introduce some practical tools, including simple software, coding, and other techniques and tricks to extract data from web servers.

Software that will be explored during the workshop:
iMacro, Fake, Scraperwiki, Beautiful Soup, Scrapy, etc.

Code that will be explored:
PHP, Phynton, Sql, JavaScript, DHTML, etc.

MATERIALS NEEDED:
Bring your own laptop (Email [email protected] if you cannot provide this)

Knowledge of coding is not necessary, but very welcome.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Paolo Cirio is well known for web-hacktivism through projects such as Loophole for All, Face to Facebook, Google Will Eat Itself and Amazon Noir. He was part of the legendary Italian net-art collective Epidemic which created visionary viruses and P2P software. At the age of twenty-two he was investigated by the Department of National Defense of Canada for his innovative DDOS attacks to the NATO website though a Flash script. Recently the international press covered his hack at the Cayman Islands.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/workshop/workshop_web-hacking4opendata.php

Register Here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/447332

Monday, September 16, 6:30-10:30pm & Tuesday, September 17, 6:30-10:30pm

Cost: $100

**25% Discount for Students. Enter password "STUDENT" to receive special discount price of $75. MUST PRESENT STUDENT ID UPON ARRIVAL TO WORKSHOP.