Published on Friday, June 21, 2013 by Common Dreams
Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Slams Surveillance State, Hails NSA
Whistleblower Edward Snowden
Wozniak: “All these things I thought about the Constitution that made
us so good as people — they’re kinda nothing. They all disolved with
the Patriot Act.”
– Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Steve Wozniak speaking with Piers Morgan this week. (Screenshot)
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has cheered NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden and admonished the rise of the surveillance state.
Speaking with CNN’s Piers Morgan on Thursday, Wozniak expressed
support for the whistleblower and said, “I felt about Edward Snowden
the same way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg, who changed my life, who
taught me a lot with a book he wrote…” He continued:
Read the facts – it’s a government of, by and for the people. That sorta
means we own the government. We’re the ones that pay for it, and then
we discover something that our money is being used for. That just
can’t be, that level of crime.
On the proliferation of computers made possible by geniuses like him
that enables widespread surveillance, Wozniak told Morgan:
I actually feel a little guilty about that but not totally. We created
the computers to free the people up, give them instant communication
anywhere in the world, any thought you could share it freely. That it
was going to overcome a lot of the government restrictions. We didn’t
realize that in the digital world there are a lot of ways to use the
digital technology to control us, to snoop on us. In the old days of
mailing letters, you licked it, and when you got an envelope that was
still sealed, nobody had seen it. You could have private
communication. Now they say because it’s e-mail it cannot be private,
anyone can listen.
In another recent interview, however, Wozniak offered a more in-depth
look at his thoughts on government snooping.
Photo: The DEMO Conference/cc/flickr
A chance run-in with Wozniak at an airport last week offered Spanish
language technological news site FayerWayer the opportunity to get the
tech giant’s thoughts on the widespread government spying exposed by
Snowden. In the interview, Wozniak lamented the current state of
surveillance in the U.S..
When asked what he thought about the NSA’s PRISM program, Wozniak said:
I was brought up, for example, and my dad taught me that other
countries when they got prisoners in a war, they tortured them. But
we Americans didn’t torture them; we gave them good food and clothing
and everything. And I was so proud of my country, you know? And now
I find out it’s just the opposite, you know.
And I just wish all these things I thought about the Constitution that
made us so good as people — they’re kinda nothing. They all disolved
with the Patriot Act.
There’s all these laws that say we can just sorta call anything
terrorism and do anything we want without all these rights of courts
to get in and say we aren’t doing the wrong things.
There’s not even a free, open court anymore. And I read the
Constitution and I don’t know how all this stuff happened. It’s so
clear what the Constitution says. It’s extremely clear in the Bill of
Rights. One thing after another, after another. It just got
overturned, and that’s what a king does.
The king just goes out and has anyone rounded up, killed, put in
secret prisons.
When I was brought up, I was taught that communist Russia was the ones
that were gonna kill us and bomb our country and all this. And
communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they
snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons,
they disappeared them. These kind of things were part of Russia.
You know, we’re getting more and more like that. […]
Look at the guy who just turned over the information on what the NSA
program was.
He said that anyone like him sitting at a terminal could instantly go
and grab all the data of anyone they felt like, with no courts […]
no warrants, nobody having to approve it.
That means there’s a thousand people in the CIA that could just sit
and whoever they want … they could just go look at.
That sort of structure is wrong. But troubles come from the top.
Watch Morgan’s interview with “Woz” below:
Wozniak’s interview with FayerWayer is below:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
