Skip to content

I was putting together a book, Your Right to Know, about people’s new rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000 that was coming into force in 2005. I thought it would be a game-changer for British democracy and I wanted to include contact details for the new FOI units in public agencies. I was used to naming public officials. In America it was no big deal; anonymity was only used if there was a valid reason. But you would have thought I’d asked for nuclear codes such was the shock and pushback I received to this simple request. The idea of providing actual names was anathema and I began to wonder who was the master here, and who the servant.

— Heather Brooke Attributed

Another quote →

More quotes by Heather Brooke

National security is becoming the new word of God to which all must submit in blind obedience.

Security services in principle exist for our protection but that is so only when they are accountable to the public for their considerable power.

Once the right of the people to see justice being done is eroded, it is not long before there is no justice at all.

You should not expect politicians to promote freedom of information. Why should they? They have a vested interest in controlling the public's access to information and thereby maintaining their grip on power.

With its idolising of stony-faced ‘strong men’, its fantasies of domination and control, fascism is the ideology of the insecure man. A man who feels - at base - unworthy, unwanted and powerless.

Substack Newsletter - Fascism: a disease born of male insecurity (2024)

All Heather Brooke quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Heather Brooke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.