To be fair, Snowden was given access to a lot of stuff because he promised not to reveal them outside of the chain of command. He did, and claimed that the chain was broken and the people needed to know. Fine. The government didn't even try to ban the the book (it would have been impossible anyway.)
I don’t care about Snowden making a profit, but I do care about the first amendment. The government is not allowed to impose a fine on speech they don’t like. That is not “free speech”.
> NDA enforcement is not at odds with the first amendment.
This isn't ordinary NDA enforcement, it's enforcement of a prior restraint on speech. With a normal NDA, if you publish information you're not supposed to, they can go to court and prove that the information was covered by the NDA and then get an order to stop you from continuing to publish it or sue you for damages.
In this case they haven't proved that anything in the book was actually subject to the NDA and they're objecting because they didn't get to review it before publication. But you can reasonably expect any government "review" in this context to be an effort to unreasonably delay or otherwise interfere with publication of the book, even if there is no legitimate cause.
The difference is that they would otherwise have to prove the contents of the book was in violation of the NDA. Without that they could suppress the book even if it wasn't. That might not be constitutional and there are a lot of good policy reasons for it not to be.
This would be a lot more obvious if they were seeking to restrain publication, so they're looking for a backdoor, and trying to get there by taking the money. But that should fail for the same reason Son of Sam laws are unconstitutional. Writing and publishing a book takes time and money which the person who wants to write it generally can't get without the expectation of recovering it after publication. You don't have time to write a book if you can't get an advance and thereby have to spend all your time working some other job to put food on the table. Which can cause the book not to be written and the readers would be denied the information.
It's as much about the right of the readers to pay someone to tell the story and thereby ensure the story gets told, as it is the right of the storyteller to make a buck.
> With a normal NDA, if you publish information you're not supposed to, they can go to court and prove that the information was covered by the NDA and then get an order to stop you from continuing to publish it or sue you for damages.
That is exactly what happened in this instance. The court determined he did violate the agreement. The information did not need to be classified, any "mention of intelligence data or activities" was covered. The agreement outlined the damages that would be assessed -- the proceeds from the publication.
Son of Sam laws and prior restraint is probably not relevant here, these obligations are the result of a voluntary contract he signed. All of the case law I'm aware of surrounding those are about obligatory restrictions, not ones that were voluntarily accepted. In general, prior restraint has national security exceptions, and there's no way any sane court is going to rule that the NSA secrecy agreements aren't legal.
> The agreement outlined the damages that would be assessed -- the proceeds from the publication.
But that's the issue. When the contracting party is the government and the "damages" for not abiding by a prior restraint are calculated to precisely coincide with any incentive anyone could provide to supply the information to the public (i.e. calculated to provide disincentive rather than compensate for actual damages), it's infringing on the right of every member of the public to pay for the information -- and those members of the public never agreed to any such contract. Especially when the restriction is specifically being imposed on the purchaser rather than the recipient, since the recipient isn't even in the court's jurisdiction at the time of the payment.
Not a free speech case at all. He said all he wanted. The book is out and anyone can buy, just the person that broke the legal agreement (not to share the classified stuff he learned in books without prior clearance) will not make money of that info. Otherwise anyone can do a few years in jail and then make $x million by telling what he saw while working for CIA/NSA etc.
I’m not wrong. He didn’t file a whistleblower complaint [1]. It’s interesting that you confidently assert that I’m wrong when you admit that you don’t even know what you’re saying is true.
” There is some dispute about the facts of Snowden’s case, but according to the National Security Agency (NSA), he did not appeal to his superiors, follow the normal whistleblower protocols or otherwise attempt to change the surveillance system from within before divulging its details to the outside world. He did not satisfy Rawls’s condition of fair notice.”
OFC the NSA asserts he didn't, but why would you trust the government to tell the truth? James Clapper flat out lied to Congress and got away with it. Why wouldn't they (the NSA) claim he didn't? They have an incentive to lie; They're not accountable to anyone. Snowden has no incentive to lie. And I assert it confidently because he did:
First, those three links all describe the same Vanity Fair interview. One cite, not three. The Vice link attempts to find the emails he claimed to send.
Second, emailing NSA lawyers is not the same as filing a whistleblower complaint. The Vice link makes the claim that contractors are not covered by whistleblower law, but certainly, he’s never provided any evidence that he actually tried to initiate that process...by contacting an attorney, for example.
Third, he has every incentive to lie, and it’s just absurd to suggest otherwise. He will be arrested and deported should he venture pretty much anywhere outside of Russia. His only recourse is convincing people that he is being unfairly persecuted.
His passport was revoked during a transfer in Moscow. This entire situation is engineered by the same totalitarian government which you now seek to defend on the basis of their own skewed rules. As long as you play by these rules and don't question them, expect nothing to change.
The point of my post is that we need stronger legislation. Your argument that current legislation doesn't offer him protection in this situation only further strengthens my own argument.
> Otherwise anyone can do a few years in jail and then make $x million by telling what he saw while working for CIA/NSA etc.
Why do you think that the only two alternatives is to allow people to sell secrets to foreign governments and sell revelations about illegal actions of the state or to punish both in the same way? Why do you think it is impossible to distinguish those two cases?
For one, the law is not being applied consistently. The abusers are still not in jail. Rather, the abuse is still going on, still breaking the law.
But also, actually, it would be a problem, because the law would still be broken, because the law still systematically protects the abusers. What is needed is a change to the unjust law, not some exception for someone who highlighted that that is what it is.
Despite the Citizens United ruling, money is not equivalent to speech.
When it comes to selling published work, we do have a right, not made explicit in the amendments to the Constitution, to earn a livelihood. But that right is not absolute, such that it is not permissible to earn one's livelihood by committing property crimes, violent crimes, or crimes of deception.
The agreement he signed before gaining access to state secrets is backed by laws that anticipated the possibility that someone might someday be paid to reveal those secrets, and those laws attempted to remove the financial incentive for disclosure. They include sections on review of pre-print manuscripts intended for publication, which only apply to cleared individuals.
Snowden can spill as many of his own secrets as he pleases, and get paid for them. But the state cannot allow him to profit from revealing state secrets. It's counterproductive from a security standpoint.
> It's counterproductive from a security standpoint.
From what kind of twisted security standpoint is it counterproductive to allow someone to reveal mass security violations?
I don't think it is useful to participate in the newspeak that authoritarians use to pretend that you are somehow more secure when your human rights are constantly being violated.
The perspective of the state is twisted whenever it holds itself as separate from and superior to the populace.
The laws covering pre-screening of materials to be published assume that the interests of the state and of its subjects/citizens remain in alignment. Snowden's publication, being in the interests of the people and against the interests of the state, loudly proclaimed that this is no longer the case. The laws yet remain, and the agents of the state are employing them--again, in the interests of the state, and against the interests of most of the people.
When the laws contain no exceptions for publications that reveal malfeasance by the state against the people, that indicates to me that they were drafted by overly optimistic legislators that haven't yet argued with enough anarchists.
This has nothing to do with preventing the reveal of mass security violations and everything to do with laws put in place to disincentivize bad actors who are in a position of trust from profiting from the leaking of state secrets. However you try to spin things, this is exactly what happened. Snowden was in a position of trust, leaked all kinds of state secrets, and then tried to profit from that leak.
Just because something is the law doesn't make it just.
Had Snowden simply leaked information for the sake of malice, then that'd be an entirely different story and I'd agree with you.
But that's not the case here. He's a whistleblower who exposed the grave privacy violations that were being conducted on behalf of the government. This should be protected by whistleblower laws.
Keep in mind the government isn't like some private corporation (or at least it's not supposed to be), it's how we choose to govern ourselves. By not allowing injustices that our elected officials commit against ourselves to be exposed, we make it virtually impossible to end these injustices.
> This has nothing to do with preventing the reveal of mass security violations and everything to do with laws put in place to disincentivize bad actors who are in a position of trust from profiting from the leaking of state secrets.
So, why is it then that these laws do apply here? Is that just incompetence on the part of those who wrote those laws? Because, you know, if it wasn't, then your claim that this was not a goal of these laws is a bit unfounded.
Plus, the fact that these laws still haven't been changed to protect whistleblowers really completely invalidates even the possibility that this is just incompetence. All those people who would be in the position to change that law know about Snowden, and nothing has happened. That is not what an honest mistake looks like.
> However you try to spin things, this is exactly what happened.
So?
> Snowden was in a position of trust, leaked all kinds of state secrets, and then tried to profit from that leak.
So?
Why is it that you feel the need to defend these abuses? To grasp for these straws of plausible deniability? Why is it so hard to see this for what it is: Systematic human rights abuses and violation of the law with other laws that protect the abusers and punish those who reveal the abuse. Why is this law that protects the abusers so much more important than the laws these abusers broke and break? How can it possibly be just to uphold the law against the whistleblower while at the same time letting the abusers continue to break the laws they don't like?
> “However you try to spin things, this is exactly what happened. Snowden was in a position of trust, leaked all kinds of state secrets, and then tried to profit from that leak.”
That looks like _your_ spin on things. The only reason the leaks had potential for a profitable book written about them is that the leaks were the only possible mechanism for society to gain knowledge of egregious abuses of power and coordinated, deliberate violations of rights.
Attributing a profit motive to Snowden is deeply incorrect and unjustified. Government agencies acted out secret behaviors that egregiously abused their power and harmed people. The doing of those behaviors, regardless of the state of knowledge about them of the public, created a profit opportunity, no different than in journalism.
Nobody forced those agencies to do those behaviors and thereby create a sincere and urgent need for an expose that overrides any laws relating to the control of that information. They did that and are wholly responsible for it.
This is about the SIGNIFICANT crimes against humanity and war crimes that he - and others - have put their lives on the line to reveal to the general public.
You (we) are being lied to about the activities of our governments in the Western sphere. They started WORLD WAR THREE, and wish to keep this fact from you.
And, they are laying in the conditions required for a repressive, totalitarian regime - and working as hard as they can, at all costs, to ensure that civil society does not have what it needs to counter their actions.
If you value the future freedom of your children, you WILL inform yourself about what the 5-eyes New World Order are doing, in your name, to ensure that the Western societies maintain dominance and control over humanity. It is that serious.
But, why should he profit ??