Heather Brooke
Heather Brooke
Heather Rose Brookeis a British-American journalist and freedom of information campaigner. Resident since the 1990s in the UK, she helped to expose the 2009 expenses scandal, which culminated in the resignation of House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
pine return type women
I pine for a return to the type of old-school journalism and the tough newspapermen and women of the Thirties.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hackers often describe what they do as playfully creative problem solving.
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Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security.
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Our printing press is the Internet. Our coffee houses are social networks.
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The hacker community may be small, but it possesses the skills that are driving the global economies of the future.
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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.
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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?
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If you don't think there is any value in the work I, or any other serious journalists do, then don't spend your money on it. At least you have the choice.