Heather Brooke Quotes

Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak.

Slightly embarrassing admission: Even when I was a kid, I used to have these little spy books, and I would, like, see what everybody was doing in my neighborhood and log it down.

In America, you have the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. You've got drones now being considered for domestic surveillance. You have the National Security Agency building the world's giantest spy center.

I've always worked on the fringe of the British press establishment, carving out this niche for myself.

If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism.

When I came to Britain I was in awe of the British press, afraid of them. But they're not as ferocious as people think. In some instances they are, but when it comes to taking on power they're really deferential.

I never thought I would get married. I didn't think I was that type of person.

Digitization is certainly challenging the old ways of doing things, whether that's in publishing or politics. But it's not the end. In many ways, it is just the beginning.

Parliamentarians certainly know how to do bad public relations.

There are corporate private investigators, companies doing very forensic background checks on people. They buy data, they get their own data ... They don't want their industry publicised.

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry.

In the soil of ignorance, fear can easily be sown.

In whose interest is it to hype up the collapse of the Internet from a DDoS attack? Why, the people who provide cyber security services, of course.

You don't make a system more effective by increasing the number of regulators.

It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state.

Our printing press is the Internet. Our coffee houses are social networks.

A lack of government oversight hasn't hindered the Internet. Quite the opposite. A hands-off approach is largely responsible for its fantastic growth and success.

CCTV is seen either as a symbol of Orwellian dystopia or a technology that will lead to crime-free streets and civil behaviour. While arguments continue, there is very little solid data in the public domain about the costs, quantity and effectiveness of surveillance.

Unwarranted search and seizure by the government officials was unacceptable to the American revolutionaries. Shouldn't it be unacceptable in the digital age, too?

Many of us are under the delusion that the police exist solely to deal with crime and keep us safe. That is to ignore the major focus of many of today's top cops on managing reputation - both of their force and, by default, their careers.

Whether I'll get the chance to write fiction, I don't know. I could do political conspiracy thrillers, couldn't I? With an investigative journalist as the heroine.

There's not a self-regulating group of nice fair-playing people in politics. There are a lot of dodgy people in politics.

Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security.

In Britain, it's bred into you, the idea that you can't really change anything, so why bother. When I went to school in America, it was the total opposite view - you, as an individual, can change anything and everything. It's how you're raised.

I'm a freedom of information campaigner, so obviously I support the cause of Wikileaks.

It used to cost money to disclose and distribute information. In the digital age it costs money not to.

The way the Establishment deals with people like me is to ignore them. When you become unignorable, they will try to smear you, and that's what I feared for a long time. Now I have somehow vaulted into this space where it's difficult for someone to smear me because it would look as though they were being vindictive and spiteful.

For information to be useful, it should be dynamic, searchable, and accessible.

There's a lot of hand-wringing going on about the death of journalism and particularly the death of investigative journalism. What I see is that there is more need than ever to have experienced information processors - people who can look through this mass of data.

A lot of people have a lot to gain from peddling scare stories about cyber 'warfare.'

If the public can't see justice being done, or afford the costs of justice, then the entire system becomes little more than a cozy club solely for the benefit of judges, lawyers and their lackeys, a sort of care in the community for the upper middle classes.

The biggest abuses in society happen when people are not able to communicate and not able to connect.

Newspapers are not free and they never have been. They can appear to be so, but someone, somewhere is covering the costs whether that is through advertising, a patron's largesse or a license fee. Advertising is no longer subsidising the industry and so the cost must fall somewhere - why not on the people who use it?

There is a very intense culture of secrecy in Britain that hasn't yet been dismantled. What passes for transparency here would serve any secret society well.

When I was 26 or 27, I gave up journalism. I came to England after my mom died, to let serendipity take its course. And I just found myself back in journalism again.

My parents are British but they emigrated to America, where I was born.

What the Internet has done is it has decentralised power.

The royal family are protected from public accountability by law.

If any of us were faced with a huge bag of free money and very little accountability, it would be human nature that you would make the most of it.

When journalism is treated as just another widget in a commercial enterprise, the focus isn't on truth, verification or public good, but productivity and output.

There is risk everywhere. Being alive carries the risk of death.

A generation of people are being radicalised by the criminalisation of information sharing.

As the news agenda goes into warp speed, it becomes ever more difficult for authors writing about current events to keep their books timely and relevant.

The speed with which WikiLeaks went from niche interest to global prominence was a real-time example of the revolutionizing power of the digital age in which information can spread instantly across the globe through networked individuals.

Britain's legal structure is basically the same as in feudal times: laws are written for the elite.

I like to write books and cause trouble.

Public relations is at best promotion or manipulation, at worst evasion and outright deception. What it is never about is a free flow of information.

I've written for 'The Times' because they have valued what I do enough to pay me. The 'New Statesman' magazine also asked me to write an article, but they didn't want to pay me anything. To me, that shows how much they value quality journalism.

Diplomacy has always involved dinners with ruling elites, backroom deals and clandestine meetings. Now, in the digital age, the reports of all those parties and patrician chats can be collected in one enormous database. And once collected in digital form, it becomes very easy for them to be shared.

People are used to getting a lot of information quickly, and they're used to being quite empowered as consumers, and they go to governments expecting a similar treatment; they want to find data and they want to influence events quickly, and yet they come into this brick wall.