US government sues ex-IT guy for breaking his NDA (Yes, we mean Edward Snowden) The US government today sued former CIA employee and NSA sysadmin contractor Edward Snowden to deny him payment from his newly published book, Permanent Record. The civil lawsuit [PDF], filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that Snowden violated non-disclosure agreements signed as a condition of employment with …
I guess I'll go and buy it then!
(Was I the only person visiting/working in the Home Office who noticed when GCHQ started to phone senior mandarins on the afternoon of the start of the Snowden crisis?)
We were all having tea at the time, very nice hospitality too, very professional people
There is no possibility of a public interest defence in a case involving National Security.
When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, he exposed examples of gross governmental misconduct, but the trial went ahead. When Chelsea Manning leaked video of US helicopter pilots laughing as they sprayed bullets into a group of men and as the APCs rolled over the bodies of the dead and dying, she went to prison.
Whatever you reveal about corruption or incompetence, even if the papers explicitly proved that senior NSA officials got together once a month to eat roasted orphans, that is not admissible in a case which simply asks the question "Did you reveal information you were not authorised to?"
You can check out Ellsberg's HopeX talk on this link
It's not a coincidence that the number of prosecutions for 'leaks' has grown exponentially since 9/11, and especially after Obama got into office and has continued since Trump. It's become a running 'joke', if you can call something so awful a form of even dark humor. It's a gross color-of-law violation? But done by protected class? Oh, it's illegal to turn them in.
There's a reason that immunity (and especially punishment for having gall to question it) should itself be questionable, even by those that benefit from it. Absolute immunity eventually leads to really bad places for those involved. It invites an infection: First, some bad actor joins and abuses it. Second, everyone else sees that nothing happens after many times abused. Third, soon, it's so common that it leads to strife. Forth, some people get told to eat cake and history happens. ;)
Well the simple but potentially obvious way around this will be for Snowden's publisher to publicly declare that they are not paying Snowden for the book. However, some minor publishing house in Russia or where ever is convienant gives Snowden a rather large advance for his new kids book on Unicorns (say)...
I believe this case only applies to US publishing houses publishing (and selling) this book. It doesn't apply to, say, a UK publisher publishing the book outside of the US.
You're forgetting previous cases.
The US government believes it applies to any company that has a US HQ/subsidiary and thus is worldwide - including the EU...
By going with a Germany publisher, Snowden clearly shows he doesn't trust the UK not to be the US's poodle; before or after Brexit...
"By going with a Germany publisher, Snowden clearly shows he doesn't trust the UK not to be the US's poodle; before or after Brexit..."
My latest book is with a German publisher. Does that mean I don't trust the UK not to be the US's poodle?
It just means that the German publisher and he reached an agreement.
Not just wire fraud. They'lll tack on 26 other charges that'll ruin your life even if only one of them sticks.
Then they'll a coerce a confession out of you for wire fraud after which they'll put you in a private jail where you're an additional 200k revenue over the next 4 years
But it's all Justice and Freedom(tm) here guys; Look squirrel!
"I'm sure they will find a way of charging people with 'wire fraud' if they purchase the book from outside the US"
A payment AND a receipt? That's TWO charges of wire fraud.
And a book containing stolen secrets? Add in handling stolen information.
And they are US state secrets? That's treason.
I had an idea that maybe this "you can't benefit on something that's illegal" could be extended.
e.g.
I'm sure today there's a dev working within the NSA who's been asked to do something that they have personal qualms over the legitimacy of that they're doing.
That's a tough place to be. I'd presume your current justification is that this "isn't your problem" - NSA asked you to to do it, you did it, and you believe they'll "cover you ass"
Imagine an alternative world. You share what you've done, it's marked as being illegal, your salary is clawed back (you shouldn't profit from breaking the law).
NSA: a hard place to work, where terms like right and wrong aren't even known to their management. Not the first or only one, though.
Let me be the first to invoke Godwin's Law (sort of)
I was just following orders!
-various and sundry Nazis
Okay, the NSA aren't that bad. I hope.
"Imagine an alternative world. You share what you've done, it's marked as being illegal, your salary is clawed back (you shouldn't profit from breaking the law)."
This alternative world is hell on earth.
A shop sells something that turns out to break some health and safety rules. All retail employees have their salaries clawed back because they shouldn't profit from crime.
If the incredibly private and classified information is already available online, has been reported on news programs and published by numerous newspapers, and thus is classed as being in the public domain, might it not be difficult to argue that classified information is being published in a book?
When has logic and facts ever stopped the US govt in the last 5 decades?
Politicians are blatantly and overtly lying (not just talking about Trump) and the corporate mediat, not only let's them get away with it, they actively assist in propagating those lies
Nixon was just unlucky to be president in a time when journalists still used to serve the public interest.
NDAs that I've seen all say something along the lines of: you can talk about the stuff covered by this agreement if it becomes publicly known otherwise than through your breach of this NDA. Since we know all this stuff because Snowden breached the NDA I guess he's now the only person in the world who is not allowed to talk about it.
The NDA ("contract") between an individual and the US federal government for purpose of holding a security clearance at all, regardless of which department or agency, clearly specifies that it doesn't matter if/when/where/how any classified information is released, YOU do not talk about it or share it AT ALL or else charges may be brought. Just because information is public does not automatically make it unclassified. This is reiterated in annual refresher training based on the National Industrial Security Program Operations Manual (NISPOM, an acronym we have to memorize).
I'm not entirely clear on the book review bit, but the above supersedes even writing a draft. You're supposed to take your secrets to the grave.
Speaking of graves... My grandfather worked for Honeywell -- supposedly on missile-guidance systems since he previously went to Navy radio school in Norfolk, Virginia, during WWII -- and didn't talk about it to anyone, including my grandmother or their kids. He passed in early 2009 and she followed last year; secrets safe.
Is such an onerous NDA ("contract") fair and reasonable whenever the upper levels of secret knowledge gleaned and learned are so incredibly valuable and fantastically expensive to not reveal and conceal/squirrel away for another time later. :-)
It is certainly not good elite capitalist business sense, battling to restrict and restrain growth in upper levels of secret knowledge, whenever markets can deliver and driver whatever analysts and programmers imagine to be possible via ITs use of Media and AI and/or AIs use of IT and Media.
And that delivers an altogether fundamentally different Bigger Picture Show to Present for NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACtive Input to Output SMARTR Enabling.
How switched on to the Myriad Wiles of HyperRadioProACTive IT Web Spiders are the MOD/UKGBNI and are they being soft targeted here with this simple registering of an expression of interest in AWE20 ..... or would one need to enquire directly via the email addresses provided/dead drops supplied?
They're here being tested for Leading AI Positions with an Engaging Out of this World Narrative Raw Core Ore Source Supplying Future Product for Present Production.
How do you think they will fare in that sort of Experimental Warfighting Army Ware? Brilliantly or abysmally?
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