Apple Inc. (AAPL) Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Rethinks America

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak was stopped by a group of Spanish language journalists while he was at the airport, and he had quite a bit to say about the direction he thinks the U.S. is heading. Of special concern to him was the spying programs tech companies have become embroiled in over the last few weeks.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Rethinks America

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Co-Founder Weighs In On NSA Spying

The Spanish tech site FayerWayer interviewed Wozniak on the spot in the airport, and CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk wrote about that interview. He’s apparently pretty disappointed in the U.S. government, and he’s been rethinking how he views this country. He said he was brought up to be proud of America, but in light of the spying programs which were revealed recently, things are the opposite of what he thought they were.

In Wozniak’s view, the Patriot Act started things going downhill, and he said there isn’t even “a free open court anymore.” He compared the U.S. government to a king who rounds up people and kills them or puts them in prison. He said when reading the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he doesn’t see how the things that are happening now are actually allowed to happen.

He also compared the U.S. to Russia. He said that when he was growing up, the Russian government would follow people around, spy on them and cause them to disappear, but he feels as if the U.S. is heading in that same direction now.

Wozniak’s Problems With The Cloud

He said that citizens couldn’t own anything in Communist Russia, and today it’s impossible to own anything digitally because cloud users sign away their rights to digital property whenever they put something in the cloud. He seems to say that U.S. consumers have so many electronic gadgets and everything goes so fast that “why think of anything else?”

In other words, are we so distracted by our gadgets that we aren’t concerned about privacy any longer? A recent survey would seem to back up that sort of mindset. The survey found that about half of all Americans actually think the NSA’s programs are fine.

However, a separate survey found a continual increase in the number of Internet users who think the U.S.  and private companies are keeping an eye on their online activities, a la Big Brother.

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