Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information

The case against PACER: tearing down the courts' paywall-

The courts are coming under increasing pressure to address these flaws, and last year, RSS pioneer Aaron Swartz and open government activist Carl Malamud took matters into their own hands. The courts had launched a pilot program that gave free PACER access to patrons of selected libraries, so Swartz and Malamud went to the libraries with thumb drives and used a Perl script to download as many documents as they could. They got about 20 million documents before the courts abruptly canceled the trial. The documents—about 700 GB in total—are now available from Malamud's website, but there are still terabytes of public documents locked behind PACER's paywall.

Via Reason.

Comment on Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information

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Re: Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information by zentara (Cardinal) on Apr 10, 2009 at 13:20 UTC
Yeah.... become pack/unpack experts. There are probably going to be boxes and boxes of data, that is needed in court cases, but no one knows the original program that stored the data. Camel jockeys to the rescue. Could be alot of work in that area. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Old Perl Programmer Haiku	[reply]
Re: Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information by shoness (Friar) on Apr 10, 2009 at 17:26 UTC
Hmmm... The computers at my library are browser-centric. Users are locked into an Internet Explorer session. It's a big world, so I'm sure not all libraries are configured as mine. However, if they were, how would these two run their own Perl script in such an environment? Maybe those were special/dedicated computers? Certainly it seems the data access was restricted to patrons of selected libraries.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 10, 2009 at 17:49 UTC
I don't know the specifics of how they did it, and this style of hacking is outside my skill set, but if a computer has any data port (e.g., USB) open and the box wasn't set-up by a systems/security expert which I doubt 1% of public computers are, you're plugging in what amounts to another computer and unplugging the target is an easy way to get it to reboot with a little "help." This is why you'll sometimes see servers / desktops locked with their ports covered or even filled in with glue. It's also why iPods (120Gb in your shirt pocket) and such are banned at some workplaces. There will be terabyte thumbdrives before you know it. Related: Portable.	[reply]