Jimmy Carter Thinks The NSA's Spying On Him

If the Edward Snowden leaks have raised your suspicions about the NSA snooping in on your private communications, you’re in good company. In an interview with Meet The Press, former President Jimmy Carter said that he doesn’t email important messages anymore for fear of government surveillance. He uses snail mail instead.

“There’s been a lot of criticism of his policy regarding drones and the NSA surveillance and the NSA,” host Andrea Mitchell asked Carter. “It has been argued that this kind of intelligence gathering is critical to try to protect the American homeland?”

“That has been extremely liberalized and abused by our own intelligence agencies,” Carter responded. “I have felt that my own communications were 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.”

Carter’s suspicion sounds a bit silly, but then again, the NSA has been caught monitoring the communications of two foreign heads of state — Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff and Germany’s Angela Merkel — so his fears do have some foundation in reality.

Fittingly, Carter also revealed that President Obama doesn’t call him for political advice. That’s probably just as well, since Carter would probably assume the calls were being monitored and ignore them anyway.