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Gates thinks Snowden is not a hero

by on17 March 2014



Broke the law

Software King of the World, Bill Gates does not believe that Edward Snowden is any kind of hero. Talking to Rolling Stone, Gates said that Snowden broke the law so he could not be a hero.

“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 really trying to improve things." You won't find much admiration from me,” Gates said.

Fair enough if you are a convicted criminal you can’t be a hero, so that rules out a treasured spot for Gates in the Underworld as he has an anti-trust conviction. Gates added that it is difficult to have a good debate about government surveillance because you have to get down to details.

He said that specific techniques used become unavailable if they're discussed in detail. So the debate needs to be about the general notion of under what circumstances should they be allowed to do things.

“It's difficult, though, because no one knows really what's going on. We want safety, but we also want privacy,” he said.

He said that technology always arms the bad guys with orders of magnitude more power. Fertiliser was not too good for the federal building in Oklahoma City, but there's stuff out there now that makes fertiliser look like a joke.

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