Heather Brooke

“Democracy isn't just for people in the Middle East, but Britons, too.”

“I trained as a journalist in America where paying sources is frowned upon. Now I work in the U.K. where there is a more flexible attitude.”

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

“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.”

“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 royal family are protected from public accountability by law.”

“It is scrutiny by the general public that keeps the powerful honest.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It is quite surreal having a film made about your life. The whole process of turning real life into drama is interesting in itself, but even more so when it is your own life being put into the narrative forge.”

“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.”

“What the interconnected age in which we live allows us to do is instantly connect with each other.”

“I pine for a return to the type of old-school journalism and the tough newspapermen and women of the Thirties.”

“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.”

“There's a temptation not to vote at all as a protest, but it's definitely not a protest. In fact, all it does is keep the people in power in power, and I don't think they should be.”

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

“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 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.”