Bill Gates no fan of 'hero' Snowden

Microsoft Co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates has reportedly indicated in a recent interview that he was no fan of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden, who has been labeled a hero and a saviour by privacy advocates, has been slammed for being a traitor after publishing a trove of classified data about the US' mass surveillance programmes.

According to Tech Crunch, in his interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said that Snowden broke the law and that's why he certainly wouldn't characterize the 31-year-old as a 'hero.'

Gates further said that Snowden should have engaged in civil disobedience or something of that kind and should have been careful of what he released if he wanted to really improve things.

When he was asked if it was better now that people knew about government surveillance, Gates said that there has to be a debate on the matter about the general notion of under what circumstances should the government be allowed to do things.

Ironically, Microsoft is among the other tech companies like Google, who have sued the US government for the ability to share more about governmental requests for its users' data, the report added.