The former president also acknowledges the importance of intelligence gathering. | AP Photos Bill Clinton: Snowden 'imperfect'

Former President Bill Clinton called National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden an “imperfect messenger,” saying that he raised important questions about national security.

The president told students at the U.S. Naval Academy in a Tuesday speech that the surveillance programs Snowden exposed “has raised all of these questions about whether we can use technology to protect the national security without destroying the liberty, which includes the right to privacy, of basically innocent bystanders,” according to CNN.


Clinton said President Barack Obama takes the issues “very seriously” and made “important recommendations,” but that more could be done.

“I also think we’re going to have to find a way to design systems so that it’s clear to people they protect both personal privacy and national security,” Clinton said. “We cannot change the character of our country or compromise the future of our people by creating a national security state, which takes away the liberty and privacy we propose to advance.”

But the former president also acknowledged the importance of intelligence gathering.

“There has to be the way to design these systems and pay a little more money to do it so that we don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said.

Clinton delivered the annual Forrestal Lecture as part of the 54th Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference, the theme of which is “Human Security in the Information Age.”

In a wide-ranging nearly hourlong speech, Clinton drew from his own experience in conflicts that arose during his presidency as well as more peaceful foreign relations to discuss the themes of leadership and reform in the modern age.