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. Heather Brooke Read Quote
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. Heather Brooke Read Quote
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. Heather Brooke Read Quote
It used to cost money to disclose and distribute information. In the digital age it costs money not to. Heather Brooke Read Quote
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. Heather Brooke Read Quote
When it comes to reforming MPs’ expenses, the answer is simply to keep it simple: show us receipts as they’re claimed and, where there are abuses, enforce the law. Heather Brooke Read Quote
You don’t make a system more effective by increasing the number of regulators. Heather Brooke Read Quote
For information to be useful, it should be dynamic, searchable, and accessible. Heather Brooke Read Quote
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. Heather Brooke Read Quote
