14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has taken a clear stance against mass surveillance in the past several months, joining Google, Yahoo, Apple and other tech giants in their effort to free the Internet of NSA snooping.
However, Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, isn’t much of a fan of Edward Snowden.
In an interview he gave for the Rolling Stone recently, Gates said he didn’t consider Snowden a hero because he broke the law. “If he wanted to raise the issues and stay in the country and engage in civil disobedience or something of that kind, or if he had been careful in terms of what he had released, then it would fit more of the model of ‘OK, I’m trying to really improve things’,” Gates said.
On the other hand, however, Gates admits that there was a need for the discussions that are currently taking place. “The specific techniques they use become unavailable if they’re discussed in detail,” the magnate said. Under these circumstances, Gates believes the debate should be about the general notion of under what circumstances the government should be allowed to engage in mass surveillance.
For his part, Edward Snowden has said on several occasions that he had no option than to take the path he’s taken – releasing the documents to the media. The NSA whistleblower said he’d taken his concerns about people’s privacy and the extent of the NSA’s surveillance efforts to his superior, but they either brushed him off or told him to shut up about it.
Since the American whistleblower laws don’t actually cover government contractors as himself, he wasn’t even protected by them in case he wanted to remain in the United States and tell his story. Instead, he’d have been shipped to jail and kept as far away from the media as possible.
After all, the United States government doesn’t really have a good track record with whistleblowers, including Daniel Ellsberg and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, although the list is much longer. This means that Snowden’s concerns for the issue getting buried are well founded.
Gates may be right about the solution the whistleblower found not to be ideal for the United States, but without him and his actions, there would be no discussion of these issues, something that was basically admitted even by President Barack Obama several months ago.
The NSA scandal broke out last summer and it will take several years before all the information from the leaked documents is covered in the media.