During the Democratic presidential debate last night, Hillary Clinton said Edward Snowden should “face the music” for leaking government secrets.
In 2013, Snowden leaked classified documents about how the National Security Administration spies on American civilians to several journalists, including The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald. He later fled to Russia to avoid being tried as a traitor, where he has remained since. Clinton said his actions were illegal and that he should not be protected for them:
He broke the laws of the United States. He could’ve been a whistleblower … He could’ve raised all the issues that have been raised … He stole very important information that has fallen into the wrong hands. I think he should not come up without being made to face the music.
What’s ironic about her statements is that she has made classified government information vulnerable to ending up in the wrong hands by using a personal, unsecured email account during her tenure as secretary of State. Snowden called Clinton out on her hypocrisy in a recent interview with Al-Jazeera:
When the unclassified systems of the United States government, which has a full-time information security staff, regularly gets 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.
According to her own standards, Clinton ought to “face the music” for her reckless actions that put classified information at risk of landing in the wrong hands.
