“This is a problem because anyone who has the clearances that the secretary of State has, or the director of any top level agency has, knows how classified information should be handled,” Snowden told Al Jazeera on Friday.
Clinton has previously criticised Snowden’s disclosures by saying that the information could have been exposed, by hackers for example, and end up in the wrong hands. Her criticism is strikingly similar to what critics, including Snowden himself, have said about her email servers.
“I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally, because of the way it can be drained—gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and the like," Clinton previously stated regarding the NSA leaks.
The whistleblower, who is currently in Russia after being granted asylum there, continued on to say that if a regular employee had done what Clinton did, they would likely be prosecuted.
“If an ordinary worker at the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency … were sending details about the security of the embassies, which is alleged to be in her email, meetings with private government officials, foreign government officials and the statements that were made to them in confidence over unclassified email systems, they would not only lose their jobs and lose their clearance, they would very likely face prosecution for it,” Snowden said.
"It's very difficult to respond in a serious way to any statement that’s made by Donald Trump." Snowden stated.
Snowden’s full interview will air on Al Jazeera English on Friday, September 4, at 19:30 GMT.
