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Heather Brooke
84 quotes
“When death is not witnessed in its physical reality, it lives only in our imagination. I think this is one reason we fear death so much more in the West than in cultures where dead bodies are an everyday part of life. When we can see the physical dimension of death, its mystery is lessened. We can see that in death there is also a lot of peace. When death exists only in our imagination or in crime drama re-creations, it is limitless and frightening.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No matter the time or place, those in power have a tendency toward keeping people in the dark. Secrecy remains one of the main ways of maintaining power over others. The conference celebrated the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act but there was a more international flavour than usual with speakers from England (myself and the UK’s Deputy Information Commissioner), Mexico and Ghana.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Americans are nothing if not hopeful. Sometimes that can sway into delusion and naivity, but the people who I heard from at the conference were aware and angry. What they had no time for was cynicism which allows for passivity. They saw the problems and they wanted to fix them. This is something the UK could have a bit more of.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where protests do make powerful changes is in the hearts and minds of the participants themselves. Over and over, researchers find profound effects on those who join protest movements and social movements more broadly. They are often a gateway drug between casual participation and lifelong activism.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our thoughts are formed through our social world and the opportunities we have in that world to act. Our actions and experiences are what form and change our beliefs, often without us even noticing.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not that we need get rid of debate and discourse (after all, why be a writer if you don’t believe argument matters?), but I now see the point of organising even small political actions. Taking such actions together can be joyful, compelling, and change the way people think about the world, far more than an abstract debate. So if you want to change people’s minds, the best advice is to think about how you can change their lives. What new experiences and actions can you bring into their world?”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we pay attention to - and how - has serious consequences, and not just for parrots. Study after study shows how badly our attention has been shattered by addictive technology. It affects our physical and mental health, our social cohesion, even our politics. Tech execs want us to think this is all inevitable and natural. But it’s not and we can fight back.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Attention is not merely the ability to concentrate on a task. It is also a way of being in the world. There is a vast difference between task-oriented attention to a machine and mindful, loving awareness of another being.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems obvious to me that techbros (and they are all bros) are modern-day Dr Frankensteins. They build technology to ‘improve’ life, while having no understanding of what makes life meaningful. Their interest in humans is reductive: figuring out how to capture, predict, manipulate and exploit them. Imagine if this were how we raised children? Such creations are entirely devoid of love, and that is what makes them monstrous. So let’s stop being complicit in our own brain rot and start paying attention to our attention.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the public sphere, perception is reality: it's more important to be seen to do something than actually to do it. At least when private companies use PR and advertising they must spend their own money and there are other corporations vying for our business. If a company doesn't give us what we want they face bankruptcy. Public institutions, however, are monopolies. We have no choice but to buy, if not use, their services. If we don't like the way our particular police force operates it's not like we can choose another one or even withhold the money used to run the one we don't like. We're forced - under threat of imprisonment - to pay for a monopoly service and for it to tell us how great it is. This is the real danger of institutional PR. In the absence of competition it is only through a diversity of opinion and public scrutiny that some level of accountability can exist. PR stifles debate and suppresses opinion through the use of centralized press offices and communication protocols.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bureaucracy is the business of controlling other humans, making them do what you want them to do. That may be acceptable if what you are asking them to do is reasonable, rational and for the common good, but more likely what bureaucrats ask is treasonable, nonsensical and counterproductive to the public good. This is because the primary business of a bureaucrat, left unchecked, is creating more bureaucracy to further his or her own prestige and power. The result is that rules are in place serving no function but to keep bureaucrats in work and to expand their bureaucratic fiefdom. Before you know it you can't even hold a village fete without filling out more than fifteen different forms from various arms of the government.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are at an extraordinary moment in human history: never before has the possibility of true democracy been so close to realisation. At the cost of publishing and duplication has dropped to near zero, a truly free press, and a truly informed public, becomes a reality. A new Information Enlightment is dawning where knowledge flows freely, beyond national boundaries. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency. In this new Enlightenment it isn't just scientific truths that are the goal, but discovering truths about the way we live, about politics and power.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Internet is powerful because it allows people to organise around issues at unprecedented speed, broadcast their thoughts and challenge those in charge. A wave of such groups banded together in early 2011 to demand the removal of authoritarian leaders in the Middle East as one country after another rose up with varying degrees of success. But the Internet doesn't cause revolution. It is a communications network. What people choose to do with technology - that is where we can make moral judgements. Some people will use it for ill, others for good. Security forces tend to focus on the ills, while the majority use it for good. In the name of protecting us from 'bad things on the Internet' there are increasing moves to suppress communications networks in both repressive and democratic countries. Demands to shut down, censor, filter or in other ways oversee and control the way people communicate are on the rise.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The powerful have historically tried to impose their will through mechanisms of enforced ignorance such as censorship, secrecy, threats, physical intimidation and violence. This model is difficult to sustain in a networked world based on Enlightenment values. This is not to say that Western democracies have abandoned these heavy-handed tactics, but more often the methods have shifted to more sophisticated ways of maintaining power such as media management, public relations and legal intimidation. In the midst of all this information and misinformation how can we filter out what is important and true?”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a politician claims for example that 'crime is down' since he implemented a certain policy, it is the professional investigative journalist who knows the raw data on which this statement is based (criminal incident reports) and who asks for verification. He or she can then go to other sources to question the veracity of the data. The reason I specialise in the intricate details of bureaucracy isn't because I have a passion for paper-pushers, but rather because I need to know all the types of information collected, by whom and where they are stored so I can get my hands on them. A statement isn't a fact. Even when the person making the statement is an authority he or she still needs to provide evidence or proof that what they say is the truth and a professional journalist should be asking for this proof and supplying it for public scrutiny. All this accumulating of statements, data and information which then has to be verified takes time. But this is the only thing a journalist does that marks him out as a professional. It's the only reason anyone would choose a well-known newspaper's website over an unknown blog. The newspaper as a brand has built up, over time, a reputation for challenging the powerful and giving people meaningful, true information. The press is not like any other business and what it sells shouldn't just be rehashed press releases or celebrity gossip, but the civic information necessary for people to understand their society and participate in it. It is a check on political and financial power, or at least it should be.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Free speech is not the great danger for humanity. Concentration of power is. We learn this lesson over and over again, and yet seem compelled eternally to repeat it. Communism, colonialism, monarchy, state socialism, tyranny- all become enemies of the people because they offer their citizens not too many opportunities to communicate or associate, but too few. Power is the dynamic force that fuels politics and it is this, not speech, which needs to be constantly monitored, controlled and checked. We view crimes against humanity as aberrations, individuals gone wild, when we should be seeing them through the prism of power. Abuse happens when a culture values some people more than others and those exercising power are not accountable for their actions.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Over the past year I've thought a lot about censorship, surveillance and regulation of the Internet. Is it necessary? Is it really so dangerous to allow individuals an ability to associate and communicate freely? Certainly there exists a criminal minority who take advantage of the freedom of the Internet, but no one is arguing that crimes shouldn't be prosecuted. This is about allowing the vast majority of people to communicate without state intervention. Despite all the dire warnings, the prophesies of doom and destruction that were foretold by the Pentagon, the US State Department, Hosni Mubarak, even English High Court Judge Eady, I look at the fallout from all that was published in 2010, all the breaches to establishment power that occurred through a networked citizenry- and the good clearly outweighs the bad. From the uprising in Iceland to the ousting of dictators in the Middle East, free speech has fundamentally changed the world for the good.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why, then, are the world's governments intent on controlling and regulating the Internet? Free speech is most threatening to authoritarian systems such as autocracies, militaries, the police and security services. Security services in principle exist for our protection but that is so only when they are accountable to the public for their considerable power. We are seeing a push by these agencies to move beyond the rule of law, to be accountable to no one but themselves. National security is becoming the new word of God to which all must submit in blind obedience. The decisions made, the liberties eroded, the crimes committed in the name of national security cannot be challenged because the information on which they are based remains secret.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We seek a saviour, someone to rescue us from the problems of the world. A saviour is the simple story, the easy option and that is why it is so compelling. You don't have to do anything except believe. There's no need to negotiate with other people, or figure out how to create a robust system within the bizarre and contradictory parameters of human nature. I must admit I fell prey to this when I first met Julian Assange. He was going to lead the way to a bold new age. Instead I learned that power when concentrated is dangerous no matter who holds it or for whatever good intention. The real revolution happens in our own minds, when we stop believing there is someone or some agency who has all the answers, who is infallible and will save us, and instead come to realise we have that ability within ourselves. We may be susceptible to cults of personality, but we can build a check against this into our political systems.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I fought for about five years doing this, and it was one of many hundreds of requests that I made, not -- I didn't -- Hey, look, I didn't set out, honestly, to revolutionize the British Parliament. That was not my intention. I was just making these requests as part of research for my first book. But it ended up in this very long, protracted legal battle and there I was after five years fighting against Parliament in front of three of Britain's most eminent High Court judges waiting for their ruling about whether or not Parliament had to release this data. And I've got to tell you, I wasn't that hopeful, because I'd seen the establishment. I thought, it always sticks together. I am out of luck. Well, guess what? I won. Hooray.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The transparency law they'd passed earlier that applied to everybody else, they tried to keep it so it didn't apply to them. What they hadn't counted on was digitization, because that meant that all those paper receipts had been scanned in electronically, and it was very easy for somebody to just copy that entire database, put it on a disk, and then just saunter outside of Parliament, which they did, and then they shopped that disk to the highest bidder, which was the Daily Telegraph, and then, you all remember, there was weeks and weeks of revelations, everything from porn movies and bath plugs and new kitchens and mortgages that had never been paid off. The end result was six ministers resigned, the first speaker of the house in 300 years was forced to resign, a new government was elected on a mandate of transparency, 120 MPs stepped down at that election, and so far, four MPs and two lords have done jail time for fraud. So, thank you.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I've seen from being in this access to information field for so long is that it used to be quite a niche interest, and it's gone mainstream. Everybody, increasingly, around the world, wants to know about what people in power are doing. They want a say in decisions that are made in their name and with their money. It's this democratization of information that I think is an information enlightenment, and it has many of the same principles of the first Enlightenment. It's about searching for the truth, not because somebody says it's true, "because I say so." No, it's about trying to find the truth based on what you can see and what can be tested. That, in the first Enlightenment, led to questions about the right of kings, the divine right of kings to rule over people, or that women should be subordinate to men, or that the Church was the official word of God.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've mentioned WikiLeaks, because surely what could be more open than publishing all the material? Because that is what Julian Assange did. He wasn't content with the way the newspapers published it to be safe and legal. He threw it all out there. That did end up with vulnerable people in Afghanistan being exposed. It also meant that the Belarussian dictator was given a handy list of all the pro-democracy campaigners in that country who had spoken to the U.S. government. Is that radical openness? I say it's not, because for me, what it means, it doesn't mean abdicating power, responsibility, accountability, it's actually being a partner with power. It's about sharing responsibility, sharing accountability. Also, the fact that he threatened to sue me because I got a leak of his leaks, I thought that showed a remarkable sort of inconsistency in ideology, to be honest, as well.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The other thing is that power is incredibly seductive, and you must have two real qualities, I think, when you come to the table, when you're dealing with power, talking about power, because of its seductive capacity. You've got to have skepticism and humility. Skepticism, because you must always be challenging. I want to see why do you -- you just say so? That's not good enough. I want to see the evidence behind why that's so. And humility because we are all human. We all make mistakes. And if you don't have skepticism and humility, then it's a really short journey to go from reformer to autocrat, and I think you only have to read "Animal Farm" to get that message about how power corrupts people.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So what is the solution? It is, I believe, to embody within the rule of law rights to information. At the moment our rights are incredibly weak. In a lot of countries, we have Official Secrets Acts, including in Britain here. We have an Official Secrets Act with no public interest test. So that means it's a crime, people are punished, quite severely in a lot of cases, for publishing or giving away official information. Now wouldn't it be amazing, and really, this is what I want all of you to think about, if we had an Official Disclosure Act where officials were punished if they were found to have suppressed or hidden information that was in the public interest?”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Protesting is one of our most important democratic rights. It ensures the most fair and efficient running of a country because it allows new ideas to be raised, criticisms to be vented. If you suppress all protest, societal discontent builds like a pressure cooker. Sooner or later, it’s going to blow, and in that chaos, all sorts of bad actors can try and gain power. That’s the real importance of protest. It means something for both a society and for an individual. It gives us agency when so often we can feel powerless. It is such a worthwhile thing to come together and petition for reform. In too many countries, it’s a privilege, but it should be our human right.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say everything is bigger in America but when you’re barreling along a 10-lane highway with massive trucks on either side of you and an aggressive SUV shoving your rear, it’s hard not to feel insignificant in a hostile universe. The only sensible solution seems to be to supersize yourself so you don’t get run over. It’s as if insignificance was the design brief for so much of American architecture and infrastructure. It ignores the reality of human size, let alone vulnerability, preferring an egoic delusion that humans are separate and superior to nature. But this feeling of insignificance leads to an insatiable hunger. For a bigger vehicle, a bigger house, more money, more guns - anything to feel more secure, and that security never materializes.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suddenly other people thought me admirable and important. When they did, I felt good. But also nervous because what if they suddenly changed their mind? I could see other famous people fall from the public’s favour, admiration turning to envy or hatred. People wrote admiring letters to me, but I couldn’t take it in because I thought ‘they don’t really know me’. They only knew the version of me I put on display - that of the tough tenacious reporter, battling for the people’s right to know. They didn’t know my aching emptiness, my deep hunger to be known. I learned that being seen is not the same as being known. Outsourcing my self-worth to total strangers, I realised, was not a good idea.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Flying from Gatwick Airport recently, I noticed the absolute dearth of water fountains. I found just one in the terminal and it was hiding in a bathroom. If there are more, they’re not easily located. It’s only slightly better at Heathrow unless you happen to be a member of a private lounge (which since British Airways changed their loyalty program I no longer am). The single best way to avoid plastic pollution is for people to use their own water bottles and plenty of people had them. There were many of us hunting around the airport for a place to fill them. Why the lack? We live in a wet country where water is plentiful. When I go to America there are (and have been for decades) fountains everywhere. Yet most British airports have a distinct lack of water fountains.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First, what makes a bad airport: Too few seats and a dearth of facilities apart from the inevitable duty free that you always find, no matter how dire the airport, snaking for miles, standing between airport security and your departure gates like an obstacle course that reeks of perfume. I hate these modern duty free shops that have come to infest all modern airports. Why is that? Are they all run by the same company and has that company got a monopoly on all the world’s airports? Or our airport managers so lacking in imagination they can’t imagine an airport without this mecca to materialism? If an alien came down to earth what would they make of the human race with our seeming obsession with alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate from the same multinational companies, cosmetics and perfume? The only good thing in them is the one shelf spotlighting local delicacies, but these are always massively overpriced and you can get much better quality and variety in the town itself.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writing - at least for me - requires quiet, stability, stillness. Some might say boredom. How to write about life when you’re too busy living it? Life fills my cup and then I need time and space to distill what’s in the cup into its essence. The challenge is to live a full, adventurous life while also finding time and space to write about it. If there’s no time or space to reflect, then what I write is just hot takes and first impressions. That’s the sort of writing I did as a reporter, but here I want to make broader sense of what I’ve experienced. Boil all those experiences of being alive into some kind of meaning.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s an impression that Trump is the most transparent US President ever. He is, in some regards, letting in the press to places and events where they’ve been excluded, saying so much out loud that is usually unspoken. Whether that kind of transparency is beneficial is questionable. Do we really need every passing grudge and brain fart to be broadcast to the world at large? That isn’t transparency, it’s lack of thought and emotional control. What counts as transparency in accountability terms is the ability to know in detail what public officials do in our name and with our money. On that score, Trump is no better (and in many cases worse) than any other secrecy-loving politician. Reporters have been kicked out of Trump’s press conferences, had their credentials stripped, or harassed simply for asking the sort of tough questions any good political reporter ought to be asking. Around his financial dealings there is almost no transparency and the suspicion grows that he is using a public office for private enrichment of himself, his family and his cronies. Details around actual policy-making and lobbying are hard to come by as well. His administration is trying to change public records laws to alter the national archives and remove information that might show his regime in anything other than a flattering light.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Protests change the scope of our political imagination. They show there might be other ways to live. They make what seemed impossible, possible; they give words to what was previously wordless, and they show that you are not alone. Going on a protest is a new action that provides a new experience, a new social network and the chance to learn new skills. Most importantly a ‘good’ protest helps people feel their own agency. That is, feel their own power and that what they do has meaning. All this gives people strength and resilience to do the tough work of facing reality and trying to make it better.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dominant model of attention treats human beings as measurable inputs and outputs: clicks, likes, views, seconds, engagement, retention. In the early days of social media, companies realised that unpredictable rewards—the buzz of a like or comment—could fuel compulsive checking. The goal became not simply to make useful products, but to engineer psychological dependency. When addictive technology was delivered to millions of people - including children - more often than not, concerns were rejected and the user blamed: just put down your phone. This is the familiar trick of extractive capitalism: turn a structural problem into an individual responsibility. The internet, like the climate, is systemic. So must be the solution.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source