Heather Brooke Quotes

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a cell of activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power.

People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.

There is a culture of secrecy. Nobody gets punished for over-classifying. They might be punished for under-classifying.

This gentleman feels that all the members of Congress should have access to all the information which is in the hands of officials in the executive branch who deal with foreign affairs. He states that this is so in England and France. I think the gentleman must be mistaken, for it would be "agin" human nature for so many people to know a secret and keep it! Much of the information which comes to officials dealing with foreign affairs is uncorroborated, but valuable as background material. The sources of this information would soon dry up if it became the property of too many people. It seems to me that in foreign affairs, as in all matters of government, one must deal with reality, recognize human nature as it is and set up machinery to deal with real situations, not those which we wish existed.

Under the classification rules observed by the Senate, we are not even allowed to tap out the truth in Morse code—and we tried just about everything else we could think of to warn the American people.

Wikileaks could not survive for more than a few months if it did not have public support

Usually the public is better off with more information than less. That includes information the government would like to keep quiet.

… in the modern world, in which any tom‐dick‐or‐harry has ready access to the Internet, the professional press is no longer a necessary intermediary for leakers.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don't personally believe that.

Oh, well, there's a difference between privacy and secrecy.

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

I thought it was a classic David and Goliath story, and I was fully onboard Team WikiLeaks. I was very pro the leaks, barring the redaction issue. But I see WikiLeaks as a publisher.

The job of a journalist is to find out stuff. The job of the government - sometimes - is to keep stuff secret. There's a natural tension there.

The fact is that when it comes to judgment as to what should be secret and what should not be secret, Julian Assange's judgment has been pretty good so far.

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.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

I'm not affiliated with either Wikileaks or Anonymous - of course, it's not like I would tell you anyway if I were because the whole point is to be anonymous.

People intrinsically know there are secrets being held from us. Look at WikiLeaks: There are secrets that are really true to the world.

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

To cover with the veil of secrecy the common routine of business is an abomination in the eyes of every intelligent man and every friend to his country.

Leaks usually have more value to the public at large than the harm which they occasionally do.