APPLE CO-FOUNDER WOZNIAK: "EDWARD SNOWDEN GAVE UP HIS LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY"

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has openly expressed his admiration for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, marvelling that he gave up his own life . . . to help the rest of us.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has openly expressed his admiration for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, marvelling that he "gave up his own life . . . to help the rest of us."
Over the weekend, Wozniak praised the former NSA contractor as "a hero" for leaking documents about the NSA's programs of mass surveillance and reiterated the importance of individual privacy in the digital age.

"Total hero to me; total hero," he told ArabianBusiness.com. "Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional."
 
Snowden, who released the documents to journalists in 2013, is currently living in exile in Russia as he is wanted by US prosecutors. Earlier in May, a Federal Court ruled that the bulk collection of phone metadata under Section 215 of the Patriot Act — precisely what Snowden wanted to make public — was illegal.

In the past Wozniak, who helped found Apple with Steve Jobs before leaving the company in the 80s, has compared Snowden to Pentagon papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. "So he's a hero to me, because he gave up his own life to do it," says Wozniak. "And he was a young person, to give up his life. But he did it for reasons of trying to help the rest of us and not just mess up a company he didn't like."