When Woz talks about being proud that American soldiers didn't torture, I feel like I'm listening to a simpleton who happens to be utterly genius but was still brainwashed into seeing any agressive war as commendable.
But then he impressively says some very radical things, such as comparing America to the Stalin-and-on's Soviet Union, which I know many see obvious holes in (e.g. no dictator in America has killed tens of millions of dissidents or forced a territory to starve, though we are obviously committing other atrocities). He mentions property ownership but he chooses the cloud as an example which seems to loop him back to talking about privacy, though I was really interested to hear if he had an explanation for saying private property beyond what is convertible to digital is somehow threatened in America.
There's a vast difference between a state whose agents sometimes use torture illicitly and a state whose policies officially sanction and prescribe torture.
There was probably a gradual shift towards the use of torture in U.S. intelligence culture such that Bush's policies were just a rubber-stamp after the fact. The use of techniques such as the "Bell telephone hour" during the Vietnam war were heavily encouraged by pressure from above on intelligence agents to gather confessions and enemy troop positions in quantity, veracity being heavily undervalued. However, even during this period, being caught (by the wrong people) was a danger. It was very much a situation of, "I don't care how you do it so long as you do it, but don't tell me how you did it and, for pete's sake, don't get caught!".
The knowledge that torture was not officially sanctioned, even if routinely ignored, still served to restrain its use. That's why Bush's rubber stamp is still a truly heinous and evil thing. It's the difference between agents re-purposing telephone equipment in the field and permanent torture facilities. To a prisoner, it's the difference between hours of torture and years. That's why I'm still upset with my own government for handing over prisoners to U.S. forces in Afghanistan despite knowing full-well what treatment awaited them.
But then he impressively says some very radical things, such as comparing America to the Stalin-and-on's Soviet Union, which I know many see obvious holes in (e.g. no dictator in America has killed tens of millions of dissidents or forced a territory to starve, though we are obviously committing other atrocities). He mentions property ownership but he chooses the cloud as an example which seems to loop him back to talking about privacy, though I was really interested to hear if he had an explanation for saying private property beyond what is convertible to digital is somehow threatened in America.
He's wonderful though.