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Snowden A Hero? Gates Says No, Woz Says Yes
hcs_$reboot writes "In a lengthy interview from Rolling Stone, Bill Gates, was asked: 'Do you consider [Snowden] a hero or a traitor?' The Microsoft founder responded, 'I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero. ... You won't find much admiration from me'. What about government surveillance? 'The government has such ability to do these things. ... But the specific techniques they use become unavailable if they're discussed in detail. Rolling Stone retorts that privacy can be an issue: 'We want safety, but we also want privacy,' says the journalist. Bill Gates tells his main priority focuses on stopping the bad guys: 'Let's say you knew nothing was going on. How would you feel? I mean, seriously. I would be very worried. Technology arms the bad guys with orders of magnitude more [power]. Not just bad guys. Crazy guys.' Meanwhile, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressed the opposite opinion about Snowden at a tech conference in Germany. 'He is a hero to me, but he may be a traitor to other people and I understand the reasons for them to think that way. I believe that Snowden believed, like I do, that the U.S. has a right to freedom. '"
Heroes do not run and take refuge with our enemies. Snowden is a traitor and should be executed.
yes, technology has certainly armed you, Bill Gates, you twisted evil fuck
Nobody. Absolutely NOBODY.
Gates is an evil sociopath.
Snowden was a dupe. He was blackmailed...and manipulated/handled by journalist Glenn Greenwald (who was **supposed** to protect his source, even from himself if necessary). As for now we can only guess at his original motivations, but I tend to think he had a sort of condescending desire to show people "how they are sheeple"...so theoretically we could round up to "whistleblower"....**maybe**
Right now, Snowden is essentially in prison in Russia.
Behave accordingly.
Thank you Dave Raggett
One could think that an operating system maker would appreciate more the privacy of the customers' data going through the pipes.
Bill Gates is a scumbag who lets NSA have a backdoor in Windows.
He's also very keen on Malthusian population reduction... sending tainted vaccines to cull the undesirables in third world countries is his (and Melinda's) idea of 'charity'.
Man that is most certainly part of the NSA dragnet says Snowden isn't a hero. Mean while other slowly becoming irrlevant has been tech leader/media whore that hasn't been part of an OS development team in nearly 30 years says YAY FOR SNOWDEN.
What about government surveillance? 'The government has such ability to do these things. ... But the specific techniques they use become unavailable if they're discussed in detail.
That's kind of the fucking point. The government is doing some really bad shit and we want them to stop. Or are you under the impression that repressing peoples' freedoms is a good thing, especially in a country that is supposed to pride itself in being free?
The wealthy want to keep people under the control of the government, so they can increase their wealth and power over us.
And where's my limelight?!?
He acted on his own. He puts an entire nation in jeopardy. He deserves to Hang Fast and High. Send him over to my house.
Yes, you would think an OS owner would champion privacy but he is not an OS owner any longer. Gates has learned the complexity of wealth and power and an alliance with his government to protect his interests is what he now champions. Anyone that lives in the US and isn't concerned about what the NSA has done is ignorant or helping them make in roads into our privacy. Snowden has done the right thing and I am grateful for his sacrifice!
I want safety but this is power hungry people with not enough safeguards to protect us from them. I don't want the technology removed, I want it governed by our people!
This may be an unpopular sentiment, but I think he should have stuck around to face the consequences of what he did.
And I'm not saying that every hero necessarily needs to be a martyr, of course... but feeling the country just doesn't sound particularly heroic.
Like I said, this might be an unpopular notion, but I believe that if one isn't prepared to face whatever the consequences are for the choices that they make, then they probably shouldn't be doing that in the first place.... if it's really important enough to do, then it's important enough to own up to and take full responsibility for.... whatever the consequences, even if those consequences may be unjust.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple I, alone, in a garage? Well, Woz is a Hero. Gates was only about money, Woz was about changing the world, like Snowden.
Gates isn't exactly neutral on this matter. Companies as big as Microsoft don't happen without close friendships with the government, and those relationships get even closer when the company is let off easy in an anti-trust case. Even if he did support Snowden, he wouldn't be able to publicly state that.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Sociopaths can donate money to charity when it helps their tax burden.
Bill Gates didn't himself do any work except public appearances...he's a **Billionaire** you don't get points for making charities to solve well-known problems that also promote your company's products
Gates **should** give his money to charity...the fact that he does **the bare minimum** to charties that spread his products to new markets...and gets a **tax write off** doesn't make him not a sociopath
Thank you Dave Raggett
Whistleblowers are not heroes or villains, They are meddlesome do gooders who are willing to destroy society and the status quo just to make a name for themselves. Sometimes, as with Snowden, they reveal practices that many would consider at least unethical and force change. They are seldom thanked for their contribution. What is always the case is that the people who have to change because of the revelations are annoyed. Changing means they lose money, power, or both.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Snowden exposed the USA for the hell hole of a dictatorship that it really is.
The more I admire Steve Wozniak. He is a true hero.
Linux forever
To my knowledge, Snowden did not reveal how the NSA lawfully conducts its business within the mandates of the law. What Showden revealed were only the abusive and illegal activities that the NSA engages in. I'll go along with the notion that sometimes the government breaks the law for the greater good, but... spying on lawyers representing a foreign government in a legal case over shrimp imports? Spying on US-to-US emails if the routes inadvertently go overseas? Collaborating with intelligence agencies in the UK and Australia so they can spy on US domestic activities and the US spies on the UK/Australia domestic activities, then they all share everything?
What Snowden did was show that the NSA is running amok. The agency is out of control, and that is the reason why Snowden did what he did. Not for money, not for fun, but out of a sense of patriotism and duty to his country.
I can see the different viewpoints of those who say Snowden is a hero, and the others who say he is a villain. It is also a good thing to know that either group does agree that whatever the act of Snowden is labeled, it is a flagrant violation of the Constitution. This is still without getting out of the US worldview of things. If we suddenly 'retreat' a bit more to get into this 'field of view' not only the US, but the World as an entity, the US worldview should learn how to queue.
But my main curiosity is this: We have two computer technology worldwide-known persons, who have expressed different opinions about the Snowden Saga. I wonder, why stop at them alone and not ask any further, how would other world-wide known computer technology persons see this matter? We could ask Larry Wall, Brian Kernighan, Bjarne Stroustrup, Larry Ellison... the more the better.
THEN, we could mine this data set and maybe we could even find that there is some mysterious connection between beeing a famous computer guy AND success of wealth AND which of these have thick trade-pipes with governmental contracts which in turn loopback towards their welth.
This way we would have way more accurate conclusions and much more credible ones. And with a much lower margin of error as the sampling set would be richer, supposing that the sampling set would not be cherry-picked.
The summary didn't include the full sentence by Gates. Just for completeness, he said: "I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero."
Time to get rid of this idea of rights .Everybody expects their rights but forgets to take responsibility.You have privileges and sometimes you have to pay for these privileges as soldiers fought in the first and second world wars and died for the idea of democracy which we have pissed away in all civilized countries.Letting political correctness take it's place,letting religion make demands without holding it to it's responsibility of religious tolerance and the most important responsibility to your freedom is standing up for your freedom when you see your country pissing on your privileges ,not rights,even if it makes you unpopular
His philanthropy had me thinking for a while that maybe he was okay.
Now? Now I'm sure he's a scuzbucket.
... matters?
n/t
Always knew there was something about the Woz I really admired...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
"Traitor" is a legal term. "Hero" is a value judgment. Snowden is probably both. The government he turned against, having long turned against their own people, deserved it.
Liberty in your lifetime
hmm idk busygary...I've thought about this & i hope he's in a position where he can exchange information for some kind of reduction of charges to misdemeanors here in the USA...does the federal government even have misdemeanors? like some kind of "misuse of government property" and get a suspended sentence & the crime is gone in 5 years kind of thing. That's what I'd hope could happen.
b/c of how I view this, he's really fighting for his personal freedom right now
i think this was a PR/propaganda tactic (a new, evil but not illegal combination of the two: PRpoganda)...basically whoever is manipulating him scheduled the SXSW thing b/c they thought it would help somenow...idk...anything to get him free & not in prison
I really don't want him in prison *unless he's done stuff we dont know* of course...too many potentially good people in prison
Thank you Dave Raggett
look, #3526197...this is #574257)...i know that users like yourself are part of being on the internet...i don't like that you copied my user profile stuff & I wish you'd close it down...but i mean...this is the internet...
what i think crosses the line is when you **reply to the person you're imitating**
let's not shit where we eat, ok?
and really...could you just change up your sig at least? why would you want to appear to be me anyways???
Thank you Dave Raggett
Given this statement, it must just kill Woz to see what's happened to Apple.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
HERO: Blew the wistle on the biggest mass constitutional rights violation in history!
NOT A HERO: Gave our enemies, ya know, the British, Germany the American people, a hint at the capabilities of our spy agency, so not a hero, wait what?
If Gates thinks that Snowden is anything but a hero, then he's fucking dumber than Steve Jobs was (and that's saying something).
Jobs was nothing but a thief from beginning to end, stealing kid's kidney so they could buy some piece of shit iDumb product. Gates stole everything that made up his company as well. They both got rich of the blood, sweat and lives of those that actually created / developed things of value, only to see them stolen by these geek-thieves that we've idolized and iconified in our twisted society.
Billy Gates is descended from horse-rustling shysters --- name me one member of his family who has ever served in the US military?
You can't!
He's still doing horse-rustling but on a different order, and Gates is the most anti-american swine possible, offshoring as many jobs as possible, while avoiding taxes.
I keep forgetting the proper term is "evil twisted fund" --- thanx
. . .have run away from their obligation to serve in the US military --- a whole effing boatload, so shut your yap, moron!
Why does anyone think the opinion of a tasteless money-grubbing opportunist matters on this topic?
Both of them can choose exactly how much privacy they want, because they're both rich. Gates is maybe three orders of magnitude richer than Woz, but both of them are at least three orders of magnitude away from the American median income ($45K or so).
Also, neither of them can just go out in public in the US without being recognized.
That's the problem with the privacy "discussions" in the US - most of the people who can actually change things are members of a minority who gave up big swaths of their privacy, voluntarily, as an entrance requirement for their profession. They can say "privacy is an illusion - get over it" with a straight face, because they haven't had any themselves for decades.
They may be over it, but I'm not, and it pisses me off that they get to choose my privacy level.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
1) the 'inBloom' database- named for how Victorian paedophiles referred to their child victims ("in bloom and ripe for the picking"). Bill "MSNBC" Gates partnered with Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch to create the most disturbing FULL SURVEILLANCE in US History. This database gathers every possible piece of information (including intimate medical details of sexual development) about every single child in the USA. Gates personally pays individual States to fight court battles against parents - so, for instance, in the State of New York, the highest court has ruled that it is ILLEGAL for any parent of that State to attempt to keep their children off the 'inBloom' database. Gates also offers bounties to individual teachers who are willing to use information overheard in the classroom and in parent meetings to 'enhance' the records on individual pupils.
2) Common Core. This project exploits state-of-the-art psychological research into the effectiveness of various teaching methods to MANDATE methods known to collapse scores and confidence in a given subject by the majority of a group that falls in the middle of the ability range. The two 'tail' groups (best and least able) see their scores almost unchanged, allowing Gates' propagandists to claim any failure by pupils in the majority 'middle' cannot be the fault of the Common Core teaching methods. The need to 'dumb down' the vast majority of the population is a constant theme in the eugenic philosophies of the organisations Gates funds and promotes. You don't "need" an educated population when "slave" States like China do all the heavy lifting, is the "message".
3) The NSA spy platform- Microsoft's Xbox One. Bill Gates personally had Microsoft spend billions of dollars developing the military grade 'time-of-flight' sensor in the Kinect 2 sensor block provided with every console. A side-effect of this is that the Xbox One, while vastly less powerful than the competing PS4 (as a gaming box), is significantly more expensive. Anyway, the sensor actually measures the speed of light at each pixel, in an attempt to be a world class depth camera. Depth information is used for things like identifying sexual activity, and locating the head for perfect facial photographs.
The Kinect 2 (which shares NOTHING with the stone-age technology if the original Kinect) is a literal NSA wet-dream. Every Orwellian blue-sky fantasy of the most depraved NSA agent is brought to life by Bill Gates. HD cameras that see in the dark. Microphone arrays that can usually hear conversations in adjoining rooms. Movement pattern recognition for triggered video recording of sex. All instantly controllable from remote NSA servers with ZERO possibility of user detection (the console is constantly uploading encrypted data, justified by MS as 'quality control', to create plausible deniability).
.
Gates seems to be forgetting that other Three Letter Acronym agencies were already standing in line to access the "metadata" and some were already actively using it, with the caution that the source could never be disclosed. And once the TLAs had their fill, the FLAs are next (Four Letter... as in MPAA or RIAA).
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Nothing further need be said.
"Rolling Stone retorts that privacy can be an issue: 'We want safety, but we also want privacy,' says the journalist. Bill Gates tells his main priority focuses on stopping the bad guys: 'Let's say you knew nothing was going on. How would you feel? I mean, seriously. I would be very worried. Technology arms the bad guys with orders of magnitude more [power]. Not just bad guys. Crazy guys."
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
-Benjamin Franklin
I wish I could just beat that into the head of the majority of people. We as a people should be firmly on the side of privacy over safety, it should not even be a question. Many do not see the big picture, but rather focused on a phantom enemy and see Snowden as betraying us against that enemy. Snowden is a true patriot, and indeed a hero, simply in the sense that he EXPOSED OUR PRIVACY BEING USURPED BY OUR OWN GOV'T. I'm pretty young (30 this year) but I'd imagine there was a time when the end of the last sentence would've incensed the MAJORITY of Americans, not just the one's paying attention. We must not sacrifice our freedom (in the form of privacy in this case) for safety. We cannot. And that is more important than some false sense of them doing this for our own good to "catch the bad guys". Secret courts, indefinite detention, etc. should NOT be happening in the land of the free. People wake the fuck up. /rant
As for Gates, obviously he would not be a fan of Snowden...it's people like him who pull the strings of our gov't anyways. I wish I could say I was surprised.
It doesn't surprise me that Bill Gates would identify with the megomaniacal dictatorship mentality that permeates our Federal Government. He was the megomanical dictator of a multinational corporation for so many years, that he can't understand an organization working in any other manner.
They become dependent upon feedings and lose their ability to survive in the wild. Ultimately, they become violent when not fed the attention the poor widdle things crave.
I suspect it's the latter, and I note that Melinda isn't giving so much away that her lifestyle is being impacted.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of philanthropy - but giving away something you don't even have a use for is different from sacrificing to help others.
What happened to the article Michael Hastings was writing before his death? Rolling Stones was going to publish it, but never did.
Newsflash: unabashed fascist and pro-government hack thinks Snowden is a traitor.
Gates' ideals are about being successful grabbing all you can (which does not mean that you cannot choose to pass stuff on to charities, but even then you game charities involving computers etc by getting people hooked on your own stuff). Snowden did not profit by his actions.
If Gates could respect that, he would not be where he is today. A person whom Gates cannot respect he cannot in good conscience call a hero.
Woz has shown other priorities in his life. That does not mean that he's averse to success, but it's more a reward than a goal in itself for him. So he's open to more personal metrics than Gates.
Personally, I don't envy Gates. Ok, I don't envy Woz either, but at least I don't think "what a poor guy".
Still looking out for MicroSofts best interest at the detriment of everybody.
Microsoft... Just like the NSA has management issues...
It is written like a semi-illiterate or the person copied and pasted it in the wrong order. either that or they are secretly drugging and polluting the brains of people in the U.S. turning them into semi-illiterates. U.S. people relying on Windows products and its voice recognition and other Gadgets and programs just a function in life tut tut tut. Have a burger watch a commercial and go back to sleep you obese fat bastards.
In other news no-one should care about, Cheney has blamed Ukraine's invasion on Obama and George Zimmerman has released a video about how he's a great guy.
Or someone on the Kremlin payroll. Which are you?
~~~ There is no Wikileaks.
This is what Bill Gates does with all his money in his free time
http://cheezburger.com/4328197376
Wow, there is so much wrong in this post I don't even know where to begin.
Let's start with the "claimed and won whistle-blower status". That is completely false. First off, the whistleblower laws only apply to government employees. As a contractor, they did not protect him at all. Second, he is charged under the Espionage Act, which does not have any whistleblower or "public good" exception. People prosecuted under this law are forbidden from telling a jury that they were acting for the greater good, the only thing that the jury is allowed to hear is that the law was broken.
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
Second, as for "the worst thing that could happen to him", consider the prior example of Thomas Drake, who was a whistleblower years before Snowden, followed the letter of the law precisely, and as a result had his house raided by armed FBI agents. They also raided the houses of three other people who knew Drake, the FBI holding the families of these associates at gunpoint. The prosecution of Drake was in fact persecution, as Richard D. Bennett of the Federal District Court said explicitly when he called it "unconscionable".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
He has not "kept revealing stuff" in order to "keep his value". He gave his documents to a few trusted reporters before he fled, and since he left he has not released a single thing. The continuing revelations are from his original release to the reporters, he is not providing anything new at all. He says he has none of the documents anymore, and the NSA and CIA and FBI have not shown any evidence that he does have them. The intelligence agencies have instead used weasel-words to insinuate that he does without literally accusing him of it.
The collection efforts directed at our allies need to be revealed, because they are part of a larger pattern of flagrant disrespect and veiled acts of war the intelligence agencies are perpetuating universally across the globe. Do you even realize we are talking about universal surveillance of every man, woman, and child on Earth? The reality is far worse than any dystopian science fiction you can find. The NSA is worse than the Stasi, as said by a former Stasi official.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
As for our political and military allies also being economic competitors, how the hell do you justify spending more on our intelligence budget than the rest of the First World nations combined? In what possible way is that an economic advantage?
The worst part of all this is that I cannot ever know for sure if you are simply grossly misinformed, or you are a government shill paid to deliberately post false information in an organized propaganda attempt.
https://firstlook.org/theinter...
You, sir, terrify me almost as much as the totalitarian government intelligence agencies.
Authoritarians are not simplistic 1 dimensional or binary extremes. Given how important the Anarchy to Authoritarian scale are to human existence you would think we would study and educate people on this aspect of life/politics/economics etc.
Gates is an Authoritarian, he is not a dictator but he is not in the middle either. It is understandable that Gates would take authoritarian positions given his bias; he can identify with and agree with similar reasoning to his own in other areas.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Something else to consider here: Gates runs an organization that requires him to have good relations with many heads of state. Perhaps he requires more caution than Woz to continue to do the good he does. Who knows what he really thinks.
If you go back all the way to the beginning of Gates's career, then it should be obvious that he is no friend to freedom, and he never has been.
In the beginning, there was no open source movement, because all software was open source. Computers were so difficult and non-standard, that software was one-off for each machine, and everybody shared everything just to get the darn things to work. Gates was born into the economic elite (his father was a lawyer and his mother was a rich civic busybody), and he brought elite paternalism into computing. The software we run is only by his permission, and we should all pay him for the privilege of improving and distributing it.
Wozniak came from a different mindset. His father was an engineer, and he learned the morality of engineers. He wrote the first BASIC for Apple, but licensed Microsoft's BASIC for later models. When somebody at Apple wrote MacBasic, Bill Gates had the gall to cancel it and not release a decent Basic for the Mac. So, Wozniak experienced Gates's ruthlessness, but he's too nice to say anything about it.
Have a nice time.
Gates gave the least indefensible answer given the $$$$ that M$ has squandered from the U.S.A. Federal Government including the DoD.
Foe sure I want to out live Gates !
And, that given, I want to piss on his grave !
The "little Hell Raiser From Seattle" can no longer "Raise Hell !" and not even in the 'Rolling Stone' !
I look forward to the hour that a Russian T-60 Tank grinds little billie gates body into the fud of the mud of Crimea.
And I look forward to seeing the headless bodies of his Mommy and Daddy. Sniff Sniff Whimper Whimper.
Ha ha.
Suckers.
idk he replied below maybe if you ask him he'll give a different answer that is more revealing
i think it's someone I pissed off who is mad that I got upmodded when their response didnt or something on a long-dead thread...this isn't likely though, as they post quite a bit
that or they just picked to Karma Whore me b/c of random reasons
i honestly can't tell you...it's weird b/c I do have 'excellent' karma but i'm not really a 'slashdot fixutre' or anything just a random guy who hates M$, false dichotomies, republicans, and artificial scarcity....i post mostly in the space, programming, 'social media' and free speech areas
i seriously have **no idea** why anyone would want the world to think they are me!!!!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Didn't Gates break the law, you know by bundling internet explorer with windows? I mean, I know legally speaking it was Microsoft Corp. that did that, but I just don't see how Gates can utter that sentence with a straight face.
Bill, we've been over this before. Snowden tried the legal channels, informing his superiors 10x, and got nowhere. If you bothered to closely follow the story, you'd see your suggestions were tried and failed.
Armchair critics are stupid. "Why couldn't Rosa Parks just ask the bus driver for permission, did she really need to get arrested?"
He didn't do it for fame. he didn't do it for power. He didn't do it for money.
He did it for us.
The NSA was lying to the American people and to congress. And snowden blew the whistle on that for us all.
And this is so far what he gets as thanks.
Can't wait for the current group of crooks to get sunsetted out of office so the next batch can save face by granting the guy amnesty.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I agree with Bill Gates' views on privacy, we should have cameras everywhere and the recordings should be posted on-line for everyone to see in real-time, and archived for eternity.
Gates is doing things to fix the world. Woz hasn't done much since designing the Apple II disk controller. Who to listen to?
i didn't say that
i said ***all he does is write checks***
that's very VERY different from what you, trollingly, claimed I said
Thank you Dave Raggett
Bill Gates brain is poisoned by his billions of filty lucre. Plus he's a shill for the State. Who gives a flying fuck what he says. Transparency like a gun causes people to be polite. Snowden is a gorram hero! Happy Sunday,,,
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Snowden should have his genitals cut off and stuffed down his throat
While I agree that Snowden opened our eyes to what the NSA was doing, I don't agree with how he went about it.
I think he could have done things differently.
Why Bill Gates?
The journalist was unfortunate, should have chosen other personalities to answer this question, suggestions?
The great chiefs of the UN, they should publicly rebuke and apply various sanctions against "uncle sam", as they like to do with other countries.
His statements do not become a better patriot than the person Snowden.
When it was discovered that the information was a business, the truth is no longer important.
But Bill, what about when the government becomes the bad guys? I won't quote Ben Franklin for the zillionth time because everyone quotes him, but had Nazi Germany had access to the kind of information that the governments that once fought against it now claim they need to 'protect' their citizens, how many more people would have died in concentration camps?
Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? I don't see why does it have to be that way. While not saying what my opinion is, as I don't see how that's matter whether what he is to me. What matter is what he did? I think it's kinda pointless what to label him. In fact, even if he is being labeled both, as I see that they can be mutually inclusive, we wouldn't have been all pissed off at the NSA if not for what he did. Yes, even people who call him traitor can still pissed at NSA, and they all wouldn't say so if not for what Snowden leaked. While many want to argue that what NSA did was with in the power granted by Patriot Act. But as I recalled, there were many who weren't happy when we first heard of the Patriot Act either. Regardless of what it was, the leak is definitely in a good timing. As many now know that there need to be a change and in favor for the change toward more privacy and the time for the Patriot Act to be review is soon. It could be worse if the leak were to come out much later, say after Patriot Act get a permanant stamp.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- If picture worth a thousand words, how many megapixels is it? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-