Quotes & Sayings About Freedom Of Information

In an information economy, entrepreneurs master the science of information in order to overcome the laws of the purely physical sciences. They can succeed because of the surprising power of the laws of information, which are conducive to human creativity. The central concept of information theory is a measure of freedom of choice. The principle of matter, on the other hand, is not liberty but limitation- it has weight and occupies space. — George Gilder

Jim Is there no other way?
Claire We could just say no to him.
Jim Can't risk that. Collapse of conference, collapse of backbench support, collapse of Cabinet. Collapse of my career. The biggest disaster since Dunkirk.
Humphrey I think not, Prime Minister.
Jim Name a bigger one.
Humphrey The Freedom of Information Act. — Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay

Freedom is about a way of thinking. Freedom is about understanding that you can do anything that you want and freedom is about being able to take information and education and make it relevant to your own growth every single day. Freedom is not staying in the box. Freedom is not doing what other people want you to do. — Stedman Graham

Next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision, it's not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other, and the way information, knowledge and culture will be produced. — Yochai Benkler

If you live in a democracy and don't have freedom of information, it's not a democracy. And people have to understand that if you don't have freedom of information online, it's not going to be offline, either. — Birgitta Jonsdottir

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. — Barack Obama

In a democratic society, there is always a struggle between the machinery of national security and press freedom, and the public's right to know is usually the loser. When our national security czars become, in effect, our media gatekeepers, we lose one of the essential cornerstones of a true democracy - an informed citizenry. Distracted by the manufactured flow of information produced by a news media that has fallen under the spell of its own official sources, and beguiled by militaristic and patriotic Hollywood myth-making, the American public is largely benighted when it comes to understanding the wars and covert violence carried out in our name. Spooked will explain exactly how this process occurs and what happens to journalists who dare to break the rules. The — Nicholas Schou

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what makes information valuable. For knowledge to be useful, it must be acted upon. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834 - 1902). All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950). We must never take our freedom for granted. — Al Zelczer

Press releases tell us when federal agencies do something right, but the Freedom of Information Act lets us know when they do not. — Patrick Leahy

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

The worst form of snobbery is to deny information; to anyone at all. Always remember that. Bas as it is to look down on another human being: to act as censor? Unforgivable. — Matthew Blakstad

The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs. — William O. Douglas

Thoughts, words, ideas and information, free from any bonds or restrictions, is the very concrete which pours out a foundation strong enough that upon which a house, stable and lasting, of true freedom and liberty may be built. — Derek R. Audette

Economic growth springs not chiefly from incentives - carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments for workers and entrepreneurs. The incentive theory of capitalism allows its critics to depict it as an inhumane scheme of clever manipulation of human needs and hungers scarcely superior to the more benign forms of slavery. Wealth actually springs from the expansion of information and learning, profits and creativity that enhance the human qualities of its beneficiaries as it enriches them. Workers' learning increasingly compensates for their labor, which imparts knowledge as it extracts work. Joining knowledge and power, capitalism focuses on the entropy of human minds and the benefits of freedom. Thus it is the most humane of all economic systems. — George Gilder

Human engagement for the storage of information in opposition to death cannot be measured with the same scales used by the natural scientist. Carbon-dating tests measure the natural time according to the information loss of specific radioactive atoms. However, the artificial time of human freedom ("historical time") cannot be measured by simply turning carbon-dating formulas around, so that they now measure the accumulation of information. — Vilem Flusser

The institutions that we've built up over the years to protect our individual privacy rights from the government don't apply to the private sector. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to Silicon Valley. And you can't impeach Google if it breaks its 'Don't be evil' campaign pledge. — Al Franken

A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetise the injuries of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera's twin capacities, to subjectivise reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs as strengthen them. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images. — Susan Sontag

There is a multitude of forms of this appearing of un-freedom in the guise of its opposite: in being deprived of universal healthcare, we are told that we are being given a new freedom of choice (to choose our healthcare provider); when we can no longer rely on long-term employment and are compelled to search for a new precarious job every couple of years, we are told that we are being given the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and discover our creative potential; when we have to pay for the education of our children, we are told that we are now able to become "entrepreneurs of the self," acting like a capitalist freely choosing how to invest the resources he possesses (or has borrowed). In education, health, travel we are constantly bombarded by imposed "free choices"; forced to make decisions for which we are mostly not qualified (or do not possess enough information), we increasingly experience our freedom as a burden that causes unbearable anxiety. — Slavoj Zizek

When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read - with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature. — Andrew Clements

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate. — Vint Cerf

Access to information and freedom of access to it may seem like a fundamental right but there are many people who think, rightly or wrongly, it is for your own good that it is hidden. — Alberto Gonzales

Richard Rohr states in one of my favorite books The Naked Now: Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing those ten thousand things. I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be present. Wise people always know how to be present, but it is much more then that. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightfully, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presence is the practical, daily task of all mature religion and all spiritual disciplines.47 — Mark Votava

Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement. — Robert Hugh Benson

The Internet is transient. Information can be removed with a couple of mouse-clicks; it is an Orwellian dream. We have been advised, by people who claim to know about these things, that there is no point in protesting against a social network. Whoever owns the network will run it as they see fit, normally to maximize their profit margin. Members who dispute the rules will simply be thrown out. The Terms of Use are written so as not to allow them any recourse. — G.R. Reader

Intellectual freedom is essential
freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. — Andrei Sakharov

Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. — Ray Bradbury

The information I requested under the Freedom of Information Act has been blocked for two years. — Sibel Edmonds

The system failed not because it was rational, but because rational choice in the face of massive ignorance - whether attributable to folly or deceit - is meaningless. Capitalism depends not on the freedom to choose but on the free flow of information across a low-entropy carrier. Corrupt the carrier with noise, and capitalism collapses. And the great corrupter of any carrier, the great generator of destructive noise, is power. And in this case the powers assembled were immense. — George Gilder

Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends. — Daniel Dennett

When you give false information you tend to restrict the freedom of choice to others. — Randal Marlin

The most common definition of [the word information] is: the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.
This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work. — Richard Saul Wurman

There are 4 billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who've historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give them a freedom from want. — Hillary Clinton

I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act. — Phil Jones

R. Andrew C. Ivy, (is) the champion of the scientific doctrine of freedom of research, which has suffered in recent years through the falsity of certain politico-physician leaders of the AMA, who faked reports, suppressed honest information, brutally slugged the opposition, both physically and through pressures, used to prevent the truth about Krebiozen reaching the American people. — Roland V. Libonati

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. — Neil Gaiman

Somhow those Ten Men
at the time they were called Recruiters, of course
discovered that Constance had been at the library. Most likely one of their informants saw her come out, because it was on that very day that the brutes showed up and threatened the librarians. Who told them nothing, incidentally.'
'The same thing happened in Holland,' Kate reflected. 'You'd think these guys would learn their lesson
librarians know how to keep quiet.'
'It helps to ask politely,' said Mr. Benedict — Trenton Lee Stewart

The First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the general public, nor does it cloak the inmate with special rights of freedom of speech. — Pete Wilson

[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored. — Antonin Scalia

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." ... But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that. — Henry A. Kissinger

The social model of the Bolsheviks failed, as will any model that denies individual rights, intellectual freedom, and freedom of competing political parties. Without these freedoms and rights, there is no motivation for people to work. Such a system cannot be sustained, especially in light of the technological revolution of the information era. — Mikhail Gorbachev

People's abuse through journalism should not be taken us freedom of press. — Auliq Ice

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. — George Carlin

These general surveys have found that the sense of happiness is higher in countries that ensure their inhabitants' basic resources, greater security, autonomy, and freedom, as well as sufficient educational opportunities and access to information. People are manifestly happier in countries where personal freedoms are guaranteed and democracy secure. This is only to be expected: citizens are happier in a climate of peace. Regardless of economic conditions, those who live under military rule are unhappier. — Matthieu Ricard

Nay," she said stubbornly. "I have just been told that the only chance I have for freedom is in your hands and by all that is holy, you will deliver me my freedom or I shall see to it that you live out the rest of your life in merciless misery."
He gaped at her. On any other man such an expression would have looked foolish, but to credit Lord Stryder, even when taken by surprise, he still managed to carry off an air of supreme authority and handsomeness. "I beg your pardon? Have you gone completely mad?"
"Not I, but rather the king you love so well. It appears he would see us marry."
"My hairy arse."
She gave him a droll stare. "That is much more information about your person, Lord Stryder, than I care to know. — Kinley MacGregor

The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom. — Thomas Jefferson

A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we're constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. — David Graeber

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for. — Kate Adie

I don't like that the government is going to manipulate the information to try to convince me that what I'm eating is not what I'm really eating. If people choose to eat cardboard because it's ten cents cheaper, then let them. That's at the root of freedom. But in the reverse, I'd like to know if what I'm eating or consuming or buying is somehow hurting or exploiting someone in another part of the planet. — Billy Corgan

I think future generations will see the invention of the Internet as having been as important as the invention of the printing press. It's the democratizing tool of all tools. As long as no one can control the flow of information, then freedom always has a chance. — Marianne Williamson

If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism. — Heather Brooke

The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a very free flow of scientific information - a freedom accepted by the countries of the world irrespective of political systems or religions ... Great care must be taken that the scientific network is utilized only for scientific purposes - if it gets involved in political questions it loses its special status and utility as a nonpolitical force for development. — Sune Bergstrom

So long as the investigation is still open, Gunnels explains, there is no way to request documents pertaining to the case through the Freedom of Information Act. "That investigation will probably stay open a long time," he says. — Matt Taibbi

I recognize the need to provide the press - and, through you, the American people - with information to the fullest extent possible. In our democracy, the work of the Pentagon press corps is important, defending our freedom and way of life is what this conflict is about, and that certainly includes freedom of the press. — Donald Rumsfeld

In order to improve the condition of mankind all men must be given the certainty of security through the exchange of safeguards, the assurance of prosperity through an exchange of resources, the reality of freedom through the free movement of information, persons and ideas. — Antoine Pinay

After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training. — Rebecca MacKinnon

There are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most important. — Seth Lloyd

I am in favor of complete freedom of information and of free access to the new communication tools, in particular the Internet. — Omar Bongo

2009: e-mails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act revealed that White House Associate Director of Public Engagement was arranging an NEA-hosted telephone conference with tax-supported artists to encourage the creation of propaganda art to generate public support for President Obama's political agendas. — Alexandra York

I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind. — Mahatma Gandhi

Yet the apparent strength of this 3-G jihad belies its very weakness. Every day, its supporters post online thousands of revealing messages and videos, giving away much more useful information about themselves than was known about Al Qaeda after 9/11. Their freedom of action has encouraged acts of extreme cruelty, which risks provoking a backlash (consider, for example, the Jordanian government's reaction to the execution of one of its pilots) and alienating potential recruits. — Anonymous

By lying, we deny our friends access to reality9 - and their resulting ignorance often harms them in ways we did not anticipate. Our friends may act on our falsehoods, or fail to solve problems that could have been solved only on the basis of good information. Rather often, to lie is to infringe on the freedom of those we care about. — Sam Harris

Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Free yourself from the expectations of having to be right with the wrong information. — Linda Deir

The historical principles of librarianship - universal access to information, individual privacy, freedom of expression, and truth above all else - are as necessary now as they have ever been and must persist. At the same time, the balance of library leadership needs to swing more forcefully toward the new or libraries will fade in their significance to the American public. — John Palfrey

Defenders of the prosecution seem to think that anyone charged with a felony must somehow deserve punishment. That idea can only be sustained without actual exposure to the legal system. Yes, most of the time prosecutors do chase actual wrongdoers, but today our criminal laws are so expansive that most people of any vigor and spirit can be found to violate them in some way. Basically, under American law, anyone interesting is a felon. The prosecutors, not the law, decide who deserves punishment.

Today, prosecutors feel they have license to treat leakers of information like crime lords or terrorists. In an age when our frontiers are digital, the criminal system threatens something intangible but incredibly valuable. It threatens youthful vigor, difference in outlook, the freedom to break some rules and not be condemned or ruined for the rest of your life. — Tim Wu

As opposition leader, [Stephen Harper] wrote in the Montreal Gazette in the year before he came to power: 'Information is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without adequate access to key information about government policies and programs, citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.'
When he became prime minister, his attitude appeared to undergo a shift of considerable proportions. It often took the Conservatives twice as long as previous governments to handle access requests. Sometimes it took six months to a year. — Lawrence Martin

The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access. — George Will

Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57 — Orit Badouk Epstein

When the Internet first came into public use, it was hailed as a liberation from conformity, a floating world ruled by passion, creativity, innovation and freedom of information. When it was hijacked first by advertising and then by commerce, it seemed like it had been fully co-opted and brought into line with human greed and ambition. — Neil Strauss

The Marauder's Map subsequently became something of a bane to its true originator (me), because it allowed Harry a little too much freedom of information. I never showed Harry taking the map back from the empty office of (the supposed) Mad-Eye Moody, and I sometimes regretted that I had not capitalised on this mistake to leave it there. However, I like the moment when Harry watches Ginny's dot moving around the school in Deathly Hallows, so on balance I am glad I let Harry reclaim his rightful property. — J.K. Rowling

Several years later, after the Freedom of Information Act was passed, it was revealed that Cotton had been working undercover for the police. — Assata Shakur

Because I love narrative but am more lyrically inclined, I've learned that if I freight titles with narrative information (the who, what, when, where, why of the poem), I can get to my main interest, which is the language, and where it wants to take me. If I can establish the poem's occasion in the title, then so much the better for my freedom to associate. — Anna Journey

None of us here in Washington knows all or even half of the answers ... If you love your country, don't depend on handouts from Washington for your information. If you cherish your freedom, don't leave it all up to big government. — Barry Goldwater

But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the American yeomanry, there are other auxiliary supports; among which is the information of the people. In no country, is education so general - in no country, have the body of the people such a knowledge of the rights of men and the principles of government. This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will guard our constitutions and awaken the people to an instantaneous resistance of encroachments. — Noah Webster

The dark net is a world of power and freedom: of expression, of creativity, of information, of ideas. Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis. — Jamie Bartlett

National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information. — Ralph Nader

This was the end of the Renaissance. Culture, once beloved and fostered by the papacy, opened the way to dangerous freedom. Then - as now - knowledge, culture, intellectual curiosity became suspect, even dangerous to oppressive regimes: knowledge leading to engaging the mind into reasoning, culture into wanting to know more, intellectual curiosity sharpening the appetite for information, fact. Ignorance was considered safe and political oppression went hand in hand with the congregation of the Inquisition. — Gaia Servadio