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
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hackerspaces are the digital-age equivalent of English Enlightenment coffee houses. They are places open to all, indifferent to social status, and where ideas and knowledge hold primary value.
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When you're a crime reporter, you see the nub of what life's about, and you don't have much patience for the falsity of politics.
We are not naughty children, and the state is not our parent.
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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.
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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.
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Britain's legal structure is basically the same as in feudal times: laws are written for the elite.
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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.
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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.
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It used to cost money to disclose and distribute information. In the digital age it costs money not to.
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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.