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

Does bullying feel right in your heart? Threatening people with violence? How about actual killing? Our hearts know what is right, and what is morally wrong. It’s the mind that plays tricks. It’s the mind that - without training, and given superiority over heart - leads us to do the things that make us feel small, corrupted, fearful and tight in our own skin. Propaganda exists to help us override our heart wisdom. The lies others tell us and the lies we tell ourselves can be used to justify the worst cruelty and harm.

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.

Authoritarians offer citizens a deal: if we hand over our freedom, they will guarantee certainty and safety. This might have been possible in a closed society with little interaction between people, but it is a false promise in a knowledge economy where citizens are interconnected. If the best chaos theorists can't model the weather beyond a week, how does the National Security Agency think it can predict which of us will turn into a terrorist? If our intelligence agencies persist in monopolising knowledge we will see continued intelligence failures.