Wozniak speaks out
Apple Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak has backed National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden and admitted he feels "a little bit guilty" that new technologies introduced new ways for governments to monitor people, The Guardian newspaper reported.
"I felt about Edward Snowden the same way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg, who changed my life, who taught me a lot," he said.
In 1971, Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon study of United States government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to the media.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on CNN, Wozniak said he was not the kind of person to "just take sides in the world - 'I'm always against anything government, any three-letter agency', or 'I'm for them'."
But he added: "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."
"We created the computers to free the people up, give them instant communication anywhere in the world; any thought you had, you could share freely. That was going to overcome a lot of government restrictions."
China Daily
(China Daily 06/22/2013 page8)