Quotes from Heather Brooke

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Parliamentarians certainly know how to do bad public relations.

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.

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.

Many of us are under the delusion that the police exist solely to deal with crime and keep us safe. That is to ignore the major focus of many of today's top cops on managing reputation - both of their force and, by default, their careers.

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.

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.

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.

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

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've written for 'The Times' because they have valued what I do enough to pay me. The 'New Statesman' magazine also asked me to write an article, but they didn't want to pay me anything. To me, that shows how much they value quality journalism.

Britain's legal structure is basically the same as in feudal times: laws are written for the elite.

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.

The movement towards radical transparency and accountability has been gaining steam for several decades.

The hacker community may be small, but it possesses the skills that are driving the global economies of the future.

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.

When I was 26 or 27, I gave up journalism. I came to England after my mom died, to let serendipity take its course. And I just found myself back in journalism again.

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.