Woz Compares the Cloud and PRISM To Communist Russia

An anonymous reader writes "Some journalists ran into Steve Wozniak at the airport and asked him about iOS 7 and PRISM, where he made an interesting comparison about how the US is becoming what it once feared most. In communist Russia 'you couldn't own anything, and now in the digital world you hardly own anything anymore (YouTube video). You've got subscritpions and you already said ok, ok, agree and you agree that every right in the world belongs to them and you got no rights and anything you put in the cloud, you don't even know,' says Woz. 'Ownership was what made America different than Russia.'"

Comments

FIrst Post Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Communist Ammerica the Russians own you!

Re:FIrst Post Maybe?

[Mike Frett]

Communism in it's purist form as visioned by Karl Marx has never been implemented; he never really explained it either. But the way I read it, everyone would be equal; no rich, no poor and we all share things -- kind of like Open Source. It's actually not a bad thing if you like the Star Trek way of working not for money, but to better Humanity. It goes back to our Cave Man roots in a way.

But society has beat it into all of your heads that it's evil and wrong, which in the way the Soviet Union had implemented it -- It is. But like I said, it's never been implemented in it's true form and the Rich and Poor are too dug in to ever enact it. It's unfortunate because I wouldn't mind being truly equal and working to better ourselves instead of money.

Re:FIrst Post Maybe?

[mc6809e]

By your reasoning about freedom, any country that allows you to leave is free.

Don't confuse leaving a group with leaving a territory.

Besides, it still doesn't work in the case of the USA. Wherever you are on the planet, you still must pay income taxes (at a minimum). It's costs over $400 in fees to renounce your citizenship. You essentially must buy your freedom.

Re:FIrst Post Maybe?

[funkboy]

Communism in it's purist form as visioned by Karl Marx has never been implemented; he never really explained it either. But the way I read it, everyone would be equal; no rich, no poor and we all share things -- kind of like Open Source. It's actually not a bad thing if you like the Star Trek way of working not for money, but to better Humanity. It goes back to our Cave Man roots in a way.

Actually the closest implementation to Marx's vision was the Paris Commune that formed in the power vacuum of the early 1870s after the Prussians captured Napoleon III. After losing what was basically a mini-civil war to the Versailles government forces, everyone that was running the Commune was lined up against a wall & executed.

As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[intermodal]

I'm not surprised to see that Woz has his head on straight enough to see that we've become what we feared. I can only hope that, despite the odds being against it, my countrymen will listen to this wise man. But history tells me that they'll ignore it, just like anything else they don't want to hear.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[perpenso]

I suspect that the USSR was never so different from the way we were then as the propagandists would have us believe.

The people I know who lived under the Soviet regime vehemently disagree with such revisionism. For all its flaws and mistakes the U.S. was nothing like the Soviets, not even close, not even now.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[avgjoe62]

When I worked in the Pentagon, there was a display case containing three pieces of the Berlin Wall. I never paid much attention to it - it was just something I passed by while walking to and from the office.

But one day I took some time and looked at the pieces. They were covered with graffiti. I distinctly remember a "Kilroy-was-here" and a lot of so-and-so loves so-and-so bullshit on the wall. Almost drowned out was the name of a young man on the top of one of the pieces, with his date of birth and the date of his death written below. And right below that was the phrase "Endlich frei" (Finally free). This young man was seventeen years old when he was shot for trying to leave East Berlin and travel to West Berlin.

There was a quantifiable difference in the ways the US and the USSR treated their citizens. And while that gap may be narrowing the fact that we are reading about this in the newspapers and debating this is a good thing. I remember a saying that was said during the aftermath of WWII - "If you want to know what atrocities the Russians committed, look in the graves. If you want to know what atrocities the Nazis committed, look at the receipts. If you want to know what atrocities the Americans committed, look in the newspapers."

Let's hope that always stays true.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The people I know who lived under the Soviet regime vehemently disagree with such revisionism.

I was raised in Soviet Union and live in Russia. And I must say that Black Parrot is quite right.

Emigration from Soviet Union and from Russia was/is driven by various factors. People who emigrate tend to rationalize their choices, sometimes in really twisted way. Well, you really need to find a way to tell yourself that the leaving of your fatherland was justified, to live in peace with yourself. If you want to learn something about Soviet Regime, I'm afraid that an average Soviet (and Russian) emigrant is a wrong person to rely on.

I'm no apologist of USSR, but I must say that you western people have a really bizzare view of it that hasn't got much to do with reality.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[girlintraining]

For all its flaws and mistakes the U.S. was nothing like the Soviets, not even close, not even now.

Can you provide an example of something that the Soviets did that the United States has not done?

While you're formulating your answer, consider that the United States is the only country to nuke another country. We used our own prisoners and citizens as guinnea pigs to conduct experiments in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. We engaged in propaganda in the extreme, rewriting our pledge of allegiance to include "under god" and printed the same on our money as a propaganda war against "godless communism." We engaged in witch hunts, like McCarthy appearing before Congress to say he "held in his hands" a list of known communist co-conspirators. We publicly executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, and it wasn't until just a few years ago, in 2008, that the transcripts from a court case widely panned at the time as a "witch hunt" revealed major inconsistencies in the testimony of key witnesses against them. That same year, the government continued to trumpet that a 98 year old man, on his deathbed, recanted and said that the Rosenbergs were spies... but the press quietly buried what he said right after: That the principle charge against them, the reason they were executed -- passing secrets about how to build the atom bomb, they were innocent of. They had only passed on low value information that was already duplicated elsewhere... mostly hand-drawn sketches.

So I'm not sure your claim that the USSR and the USA were significantly different in their propaganda campaigns... In fact, I would argue they were more or less the same, both in substance and quantity. But I'd be happy to entertain any significant act that you feel the USSR undertook that didn't have a parallel from the USA.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[perpenso]

For all its flaws and mistakes the U.S. was nothing like the Soviets, not even close, not even now.

Can you provide an example of something that the Soviets did that the United States has not done?

Read up on the Stalin era. Even later Soviet leaders were disgusted.

While you're formulating your answer, consider that the United States is the only country to nuke another country.

And in the odd perverse mathematics of war may have saved lives compared to blockade and starvation or invasion and mass casualties by conventional weapons. The simple fact was that Truman was expecting 500,000 American dead and 5 million Japanese dead if the war continued through conventional means. The atomic bombings were a tragedy, the problem is that the other options may have been far worse. A classic negative-negative decision, all your likely options are bad.

The casualties from mass fire bombings in Tokyo were comparable to an atomic bombing. Read Eugene Sledge's "With The Old Breed" for an account of the fighting on Okinawa. President Truman had such accounts in his mind when he made the decision. Also note that civilian casualties on Okinawa were comparable to an atomic bombing. I realize it is popular today to say that Japan was going to surrender anyway but the historical facts are that the surrender after the atomic bombings and after the emperor's decision nearly failed when a military coup was attempted. The plotter's had to "rescue" the emperor from the bad advice his ministers were providing and prevent his surrender message from going out. We have no idea what would have happened without the atomic bombings, imminent surrender is hardly a foregone conclusion. Again, Truman faced a negative-negative decision, he had no good option, rather one option that may produce fewer casualties (military and civilian) than the others.

We used our own prisoners and citizens as guinnea pigs to conduct experiments in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.

Agreed, terrible.

We engaged in propaganda in the extreme, rewriting our pledge of allegiance to include "under god" and printed the same on our money as a propaganda war against "godless communism."

Seriously? This is some great and terrible crime?

We engaged in witch hunts, like McCarthy appearing before Congress to say he "held in his hands" a list of known communist co-conspirators.

McCarthy was a buffoon. The anti-communist witch hunts wrong. But you are making my point for me. These witch hunts were nothing like those under the Soviets. Read up on Soviet gulags.

We publicly executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, and it wasn't until just a few years ago, in 2008, that the transcripts from a court case widely panned at the time as a "witch hunt" revealed major inconsistencies in the testimony of key witnesses against them.

Decoded 1944 Soviet cables confirmed Julius worked for the Soviets. Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that they helped accelerate the Soviet atomic bomb program. Various Soviet officials eventually confirmed that Julius was a wartime spy.

They had only passed on low value information that was already duplicated elsewhere... mostly hand-drawn sketches.

Primary source or merely a secondary confirmatory source, large contribution or small contribution, its still wartime espionage. Was the penalty excessive, perhaps, but executing a wartime spy is hardly in the same category as executing those who disagree with a government policy, as we saw in large scale during the Stalin era. Again, you are merely confirming the US and Soviet governments were nothing alike. No one is claiming the US government was without flaws and mistakes, just nowhere near the Soviet level. Enlightened leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev were the exception not the rule.

Re:As usual, Woz proves to be the guy who knows.

[tftp]

Does killing tens of millions of your own citizens in forced collectivization, forced relocations, artificial famines and camps that worked their prisoners to death count for anything?

Are you talking about American Indians?

digital take over

[theatrecade]

I agree with Woz. Nobody owns anything. Everything digitally is licensed. Even when you hold a physical copy in your hands it's on loan for 60$. You ever actually read a EULA? With the NSA spying on you on everything not only don't you own anything nothing is private anymore.. welcome to the new America! Welcome to the New World... I hope you enjoy your stay and by the way ignore that 4th amendment only the 2nd one kinda counts....

Re:digital take over

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Russians in Soviet Russia could own a house and almost every other thing anybody could own in the West. Communism was/is about the ownerships of means of production (factories, land) and not pencils or cars. http://www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/RussianAlly/RussianAlly9.htm

Re:There's something we'll always own.

[Black Parrot]

Apparently SCOTUS just ruled that you can't patent 'natural' DNA.

Power Corrupts. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

[Zeio]

This is nothing new.

We live in a oligarchical collectivist police state where a banking cabal, central governments, the military industrial complex and megacorps control everything.

The little guy, the small business, freedom, liberty. Gone.

Welcome to wage slavery, plebeians. And you voted your captors in.

Microcomputer revolution was against the "cloud"

[perpenso]

The microcomputer revolution that Woz was a significant contributor to was in part a movement against the "cloud" of that day, remote minicomputers and mainframes where your software and your data lived. One of the goals of the microcomputer revolution was to have your software and your data on your computer on your desk.

If we were to have a second revolution in the spirit of the preceding perhaps we would have our own "cloud" servers hosted on our own IP address at home, offering ubiquitous access to all of our computers and devices and syncing between them. Again, all your data being hosted on your server on your desk (or in the corner or the closet).

Re:But can we trust Woz's judgement?

[johnjaydk]

After all, here is a guy (who insists on using a juvenile nickname) who had the wool pulled over his eyes by perhaps one of the most successful psychopaths of this and the last century: Steve Jobs. Do you really think this guy is qualified? The analogy would be asking RMS for hygiene tips, or ESR for advice on your sex life.

It wasn't more than a few years ago that we had a comment from a guy who shared office with RMS, who insisted that RMS had excellent hygiene so I would suggest you stick to car analogies. As to Woz, he might be a bit naive but he is a great engineer and his heart is in the right place. I would love to have more friends with those qualities.

Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[Penguinisto]

Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi

Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[fahrbot-bot]

Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi

Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access, the ISPs and Telcos actually collected the information and sent the NSA copies. [ So when James Clapper, was asked, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" and he responded, "No" he wasn't technically lying to Congress... ]

Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi

The Stasi were more competent than average; but what arguably makes the 'in capitalist America' system cleverer is how it can function as a (relatively) inexpensive appendage of free market incentives that already exist.

So much useful data gets generated, and sometimes compiled, purely for the convenience of self-sustaining private sector actors(the phone company routing calls to the correct cell and billing you, your credit card issuer keeping accounts in order, your ISP shepherding the little packets about, advertising weasels scrutinising your behavior to try to sell you stuff, Everything Facebook, people 'checking in' to random shit on foursquare, etc, etc.) You don't need to bother with the (impressive; but rather unsustainably expensive) 'more than 10% of the population acting as at least part-time informants' business. You just copy the data that the private sector generates automatically!

Now, copying, storage, and analysis aren't free, by any means; but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than having to gather the data yourself and then pay for storage and analysis. Plus(solving a second problem that commies always had trouble with) your intelligence apparatus doubles as your consumer-goods R&D and focus grouping apparatus, since large parts of it are shared between marketing weasels and spooks, so you don't run into those embarrassing bare shelves and unfashionable lifestyles...

Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[BlueStrat]

Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access,...

You mean, exist in a reality where there are no secret NSA rooms mirroring all the data from major carriers?

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/11/09/2040206/ex-att-tech-says-nsa-monitors-all-web-traffic

No. Clapper is a lying POS that needs to spend many decades (his remaining life) inside a super-max cell.

And he's far from the only one in this government (from both political parties) that belongs in a prison cell for the rest of their lives, and many executed for their crimes against all US citizens of all political/religious/ideological stripes and the betrayal of their Oaths of Office to protect and defend the US Constitution that have been highlighted by the string of scandals and revelations of late, and their outright lies under oath in response to questions.

This is not a (R) or (D) issue. They don't even bother keeping promises to their own Party's constituents unless it fits their agendas. They lie and betray everyone while defying and destroying the Rule of Law and constantly seeking to further restrict and redefine individual liberty and Constitutional Rights.

They see themselves as our masters and ALL of us as serfs. History demonstrates repeatedly that this is what happens when a government and those running it gain too much power relative to the people.

The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.

Strat

Re: Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[s.petry]

almost

Try always. in place of that. It was released the other day, FISA has approved 100% of the requests it has received from agencies. Giving rise to a reporter calling it a rubber stamp(correctly)

Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[bkmoore]

....I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi

Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access, the ISPs and Telcos actually collected the information and sent the NSA copies....

The STASI did not have enough agents to spy on the East German population. That is why they relied on "Unofficial Colleges (IM)" or informants to do most of the eavesdropping for them. What the NSA and the ISPs/Telcos do in tandem is not very different than the old STASI / IM system. The only difference is the STASI had to rely on the technology of the day; typewriters, microphones, and tape recorders. The NSA system is digital and automated.

With enough AI, the NSA could easily achieve a kind of automated super-spy system that records each and every criminal action by anyone who posts online information, uses the telephone, etc. Remove that mattress label, mention it on the phone, or post it on /. and get a letter from law enforcement asking to pay a fine. Or they could wait until you get caught for something big and tack on every little "crime" you have ever inadvertently committed, such as eating an illegal lobster, and yes there is a federal law against that.

Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs.

[Patch86]

If the responder (James Clapper) had wanted to answer the question in the "most truthful" manner, he could have answered with more words than "no". Such as "No, but we didn't need to collect it because we have been provided with massive quantities of data simply by asking companies to provide it to us".

What Mr Clapper did there was what we like to call "lying by omission". By answering a question in such a way as to deliberately misunderstand what is being asked of you and therefore deliberately not providing the information expected, you are lying. It doesn't matter if you did so by saying as few words as possible.

There is no other way to interpret his answer other than that he was deliberately attempting to not tell Congress what Congress wanted him to tell them.

In Soviet Russia

[dkleinsc]

Youtube watches you!
Google searches you!
Email reads you!
MS Windows boots you!
Facebook pictures you!
Text message receives you!

Ok, I'm done, anyone else?

Re:Rant against the cloud on youtube?

[robot256]

It would have been more of a mistake if there was any hope his opponent would have been better on these issues. Frankly, the only reason any Republicans are speaking out against the NSA is because it's Obama's NSA. They were just as complicit as the rest of us when they rammed the Patriot Act through.

USA - USSR + Russian Federation = NWO

[some old guy]

The old Party oligarchs in Russia gave up on the disfunctional Marxist police state in favor of an overtly fascist police state so they could 1) become as wealthy as Western oligarchs, 2) flaunt it like Western oligarchs, and 3) give the masses a few more consumer shinies to keep them fairly passive, all with a nice facade of democracy.

Yeltsin set the stage, and Putin has made it a tour de force in how to re-brand oppression. "There is no such thing as a former Chekist", as Uncle Boris likes to say.

Russian has become more like the USA, and the USA becomes more like Russia.

New World Order, anyone?

Re:Mr. Wozniak...

[Darinbob]

Only a nerd would threaten a security service comprised of no-neck jocks with Mjölnir. They'll be scratching their heads for months now wondering what this is and if it's from some terrorist language.

Re:Rant against the cloud on youtube?

[mcgrew]

The Republican House Speaker called Edward Snowden a traitor. It's a bipartisan police state we now have (this isn't the first time I've said that). I wouldn't doubt if I were on the no-fly list but I haven't been on a plane since you could smoke inflight.

I say Boehner's the traitor, Snowden's a patriot who gave everything but his life (and still may) for his fellow Americans.

If you're against Snowden you're against freedom. That's one brave kid.