The NSA was sloppy about guarding its classified secrets from Edward Snowden, but no one at the agency is in danger of being prosecuted for that security lapse. What Hillary Clinton did with her private email server, however, is criminal, says Snowden.

If any other State Department or CIA employee were using a private email server to send details about the security of embassies, as Clinton is rumored to have done, as well as sensitive meetings with private US government officials and foreign officials over unclassified email systems, "they would not only lose their jobs and lose their clearance, they would very likely face prosecution for it," the NSA whistleblower said in an interview with Al Jazeera English.

"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," Snowden said, referring to the location of Clinton's controversial email server, which had been maintained by the Denver-based company Platte River Networks, and to Clinton's initial assertions that her server was secure and had suffered no security breaches.

Snowden is right about the punishment others would face for mishandling classified information. There have been a smattering of such prosecutions over the last decade, generally involving low-to-mid-level military and government personnel. Former CIA Director General David H. Petraeus is one of the most prominent to be caught up in a case involving the mishandling of classified information. He was charged with mishandling classified materials after an investigation revealed that he had improperly removed and stored top-secret information in eight personal notebooks that he kept in an unlocked drawer in his home study while CIA Director. The information in the notebooks included code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and notes about discussions with the National Security Council. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials and was fined $100,000.