Heather Brooke

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.

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.

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.

We pay a lot for our court service, but it's not enough. Courts are under-resourced, which leads to delayed justice - particularly in criminal courts.

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.

I like to write books and cause trouble.

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.

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.

Democracy isn't just for people in the Middle East, but Britons, too.

Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security.

Parliamentarians certainly know how to do bad public relations.

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.