14 DAY TRIAL // Steve Wozniak, the famous Apple co-founder, shows support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and claims to feeling a little guilty that new technologies have introduced new ways for governments to monitor people.
During an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Wozniak says that he feels about Snowden in pretty much the same way that he felt about Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the leak of classified Pentagon papers back in 1971.
While he admits that he’s never been the kind of person to just take sides in the world, the recent events have made him take a stand.
“Read the facts: it’s government of, by and for the people. We own the government; we are the ones who pay for it and then we discover something that our money is being used for – that just can’t be, that level of crime,” he says during the interview.
Morgan goes on to point out that governments are able to keep a close eye on citizens thanks to the work of innovators like Wozniak. The Apple co-founder mentions that he actually feels a little guilty about that, but not completely.
“We created the computers to free the people up, give them instant communication anywhere in the world. […] We didn’t realize that in the digital world there were a lot of way to use the digital technology to control us, to snoop on us, to make things possible that weren’t,” Wozniak says.
Previously, The Guardian points out, the Apple co-founder expressed an opinion about the surveillance programs run by the NSA for a Spanish technology site, FayerWayer.
“There are all these laws that just say ‘we can secretly call anything terrorism and do anything we want, without the rights of courts to get in and say you are doing wrong things’. There’s not even a free open court any more. Read the constitution. I don’t know how this stuff happened. It’s so clear what the constitution says,” he complains.