Former President Jimmy Carter thinks the National Security Agency is probably monitoring his email.

In an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell airing during Sunday's "Meet the Press," Carter said he favors snail mail when communicating with foreign officials.

"[The justification for surveillance] has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies," Carter told Mitchell. "As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored. And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it."

"Old fashioned snail mail," Mitchell said.

"Yeah. Because I believe if I send an email it will be monitored," he said.

Carter has previously expressed support for Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked documents on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs.

"He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far," Carter said in an interview with CNN last June. "I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."

The former president later said the United States' democracy had been compromised by the spying.