Heather Brooke

“We are not naughty children, and the state is not our parent.”

“The values of WikiLeaks have been completely overshadowed by Julian Assange.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“The monarchy is a part of the state. It exists to serve the people.”

“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.”

“If you really believe in a cause, let the cause speak for itself. And if you, by your personality, are damaging that cause, if you really believe in it, you step aside.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“Hackers often describe what they do as playfully creative problem solving.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.”

“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.”

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