National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden said if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been a lower-level employee at the agency, it is likely she would have been prosecuted for using a private email server.
During an interview with Al Jazeera Thursday, the former NSA contractor, who currently lives in exile in Russia, alleged that anyone with the clearances of a director at a top-level agency would know how to handle classified information.
“When the unclassified systems of the United States government — which has a full time information security staff — regularly get hacked, the idea that someone keeping a private server in the renovated bathroom of a server farm in Colorado, is more secure is completely ridiculous,” he said.
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The FBI is currently conducting an “extremely serious” investigation into whether the Democratic presidential front-runner compromised national security by using her personal email server for official use.
“If an ordinary worker at the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency, or anything like that, were sending details about the security of embassies, which is alleged to be in her emails, 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,” Snowden said.
Clinton’s poll numbers have been dwindling, in part because of the ongoing email controversy.
Bryan Pagliano, who set up the server in 2009, said he will plead the Fifth Amendment if called before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
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