Heather Brooke

It is scrutiny by the general public that keeps the powerful honest.

Slightly embarrassing admission: Even when I was a kid, I used to have these little spy books, and I would, like, see what everybody was doing in my neighborhood and log it down.

I'm a freedom of information campaigner, so obviously I support the cause of Wikileaks.

Secrecy can be sexy. It's essential to any good mystery novel.

A generation of people are being radicalised by the criminalisation of information sharing.

The biggest abuses in society happen when people are not able to communicate and not able to connect.

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.

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.

People are used to getting a lot of information quickly, and they're used to being quite empowered as consumers, and they go to governments expecting a similar treatment; they want to find data and they want to influence events quickly, and yet they come into this brick wall.

When I came to Britain I was in awe of the British press, afraid of them. But they're not as ferocious as people think. In some instances they are, but when it comes to taking on power they're really deferential.

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.

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.