> The government may steal a dollar, but it cannot erase the idea that earned it. I wrote this book, Permanent Record, for you, and I hope the government's ruthless desperation to prevent its publication only inspires you read it—and then gift it to another.
> The court's ruling is a hack intended to circumvent First Amendment limits on what the gov't can censor. They can't (yet) ban the book, so they ban profit to try and prevent such books from being written in the first place.
The ruling is based on a claim that "Snowden breached several contracts with and fiduciary duties to the United States". The crux here is that Snowden was an employee and contractor. If he didn't have that prior, voluntary relationship, then the government likely wouldn't have any firm ground to stand on.
I don't see how you could eliminate such a claim without also eliminating the ability of the government to require and enforce secrecy from private contractors and employees more generally. For example, imagine IRS workers writing a tell-all book about the tax returns of various people.
IMO Snowden is a persecuted patriot and should be pardoned for any and all crimes (notwithstanding the legitimacy of some of the alleged crimes). But that doesn't mean the government doesn't have legitimate interests in censuring some forms of information. "Free speech" is a term of art and until very recently in nobody's wildest imagination would it cover the disclosure in the first instance of internal government data by government employees and contractors.
I believe they might go after the publisher in this case, and that Snowden already got a good advance they presumably can't get to while he's in Russia.
> Snowden's former work agreements with the CIA and NSA are clear that he (and any other employee) must submit the contents of books or speeches for review.
I noticed that there seems to be a trend to use legal technicalities to enforce bizarre rules that completely defy the intent of the constitution.
I'd be questioning whether it should be legal for any company or agency to force prospective employees to sign away their most basic human rights as part of a work contract.
Same thing goes for big corporations like Google which use contractual clauses to take possession of their employees' personal side projects. That is BS.
How would they like it if the government told CEOs and other corporate executives that in order to be an American citizen and live in America, they need to sign away their rights to all the work they did and all the assets they amassed while living in the US? Imagine if every developed country in the world demanded the same.
That's what it's like in today's institution and corporation-dominated world. You can't work for a decent wage unless you're prepared to give up all your basic rights. It's disturbing that nobody is protesting this. It ought to be criminal.
If the company can't make sure that employees don't work on side projects during company time then it's because managers are incompetent and such poorly run company doesn't deserve any legal protection.
Do you think that the existence of classified information is antithetical to the 1st amendment? I don't see how a nation can have secrets without being able to enforce at least some limitations on free (and commercial...) speech.
Classified information is antithetical to Thomas Jefferson's ideal of a well informed citizenry to whom government is ultimately responsible and accountable. He affirmed this idea throughout his political writings, but most notably in Bill 79, "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge." Its preamble reads as follows:
Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes; And whereas it is generally true that that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those person, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked:...
Bill 79 was mostly about public schooling, but it contains the kernel of an argument for more open governance and against ubiquitous secrecy in language like "give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes".
I think there is a big difference between publishing classified information and publishing something that may hypothetically contain classified information.
I don't think the latter should be enforceable by a contract. I think any review/editorial process should be the writer's own responsibility.
I always found it funny that people say that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. But hey that never seems to apply to the government.
If the government is allowed to overrule the first amendment for classified information, how can someone like Snowden report corruption? Because what Snowden reported does appear to be the early warning signs of actual corruption. Many of the things that were revealed about Australia were things I would quite have liked the opportunity to vote against as an Australian and I expect there are US citizens in a similar position.
Democracies can't keep secrets, all the oversight mechanisms eventually rely on voters and fail if voters don't know what is going on. Making it clear to government employees that they will be sacked if they talk about something is fine. Short-term classification is theoretically a problem but workable in practice.
However it is well worth noting that capability related to PRISM probably started under Bush, expanded under Obama and may already have been used to surveil a presidential candidate with what is being revealed about the Trump campaign. That isn't a lot of political generations. Who knows what the democrat campaign will be subjected to by the current administration. We still might not know the full details of what is happening if classified capability is involved. From a systems perspective this is a rapidly developing disaster where voters can't make good decisions because information is being hidden. So yes classified info is antithetical to free speech.
>Same thing goes for big corporations like Google which use contractual clauses to take possession of their employees' personal side projects. That is BS.
>That's what it's like in today's institution and corporation-dominated world. You can't work for a decent wage unless you're prepared to give up all your basic rights. It's disturbing that nobody is protesting this. It ought to be criminal.
You can still work in tech for a decent wage, without having to sign away your personal projects or free speech. It's difficult to have much sympathy towards those who choose to work for Google et el and then complain about the conditions of their employment. They signed up for it despite there being other options.
He also passed a whistle blower bill that actually removed protections from government whistle blowers that are reporting illegal actions of the government.
If what you claim is correct, the judge wouldn't have had to block proceeds from the book sales. It isn't correct. That executive order authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions on specific individuals who have engaged in the particular behavior described. The Secretary of the Treasury has not imposed such a sanction on Snowden. https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/
The logical next-step is to ensure this book is stocked in every public library in America.
If the US Government intends to capture the profits from this book, then there is ample incentive to purchase copies for public consumption as it is now effectively purchased at-cost.
Well, they probably aren't going to take the profits from amazon, it's going to go to the publisher, then they will probably garnish the payments to snowden or freeze the accounts or something like that.
It would be cool to see this go second hand by a fan. A fan that could buy up all the copies at a bulk rate (say $2 for 1M copies) Then re-sell those at the original price. Since it's now a used book, that fan could donate the profit to the original author, whoever that is.
Unfortunately, there was an Executive Order[1] signed by Obama in 2015 that "Blocks the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities".
Section 2 states: "I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in this order, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order."
Where Snowden, or people similar to him, fall within the category of persons described within Section 1.
Found a company to sell the books under, found another company ostensibly owned by Snowden and domiciled in another country to operate as a shell. Grant the shell company special shares of the parent company entitling the shell company exclusive rights to dividends, and funnel profits through the American parent company, to the shell and into a bank account which distributes the proceeds to various accounts all of the world.
The government is happy to enable such actions for the wealthy plutocrats of the world. So why not use such a loophole to undermine their ability sanction individuals.
I wouldn’t want to be that other guy. He might get disappeared via extraordinary rendition or rape allegationed into exile in some small embassy suite. No thanks!
The actual reason surprised me, I expected it to be Son of Sam law related (can't profit from works related to a crime, so the debate would entirely be about whether or not he committed a crime), but since he hasn't been tried I don't believe that law can apply (recently learned this from a podcast about Anna Delvey, who was able to keep an advance related to her fraud because it came prior to her conviction).
I posted this in another thread, but it didn't get much traction. It's a serious question.
Isn't Snowden's book an auto-biographical memoir? Given this, is there really classified information contained in the book? Can someone who has read it give an example?
I've watched Snowden's Rogan interview, where he covers the material in the book, and I don't remember anything that was classified.
It doesn't really matter, they can still use pre-publication review to jack you up by redacting even what is otherwise publicly available information and delay publication until the news cycle has moved on. The process is arbitrary and politicized, and widely considered to have become a First Amendment issue, which is not surprising, since the modern review process emerged in the 70s when the CIA was trying to mute public criticism by former employees of the lies, abuse, and failures of the Vietnam War.
Gotcha. The argument here is that it may be that there is no classified material in the memoirs, but it doesn't matter. The publication review process can be used as an effective censorship measure in any case.
There's a thought experiment in that thread about whether or not pulling proceeds and profit is standard operating proceedure or really arbitrarity and politically applied. Do you happen to know if there are examples of this pattern and process being applied in non-politically motivated situations?
I've read it, and while it contains some interesting stories, he very clearly states in the opening chapter that there is nothing in the book that is classified in any way, nor should you expect to see them. It's more of his stories of how his mind changed over time and the culture of the cia/nsa and their private associated companies. If anything it seems to reveal (in an indicting kind of way) that what he did was achieved slowly (ie. Premeditated), rather than being a spur of the moment thing. Also, glaringly obvious is his love for his now wife, Lindsay.
I found that her diary entries on the way she was treated was far more revealing and highly electric.
There is definitely some sensitive information in there. The government doesn't distinguish between classified information that is public knowledge, and still-secret classified information.
Regardless, their point is that Snowden did not send the book in for approval/redaction before publishing, as would be required of any former employee of a three-letter agency writing about such things.
If I've read your comment correctly there are two major points:
1. It's highly likely (you said definitely) given the person and subject that some information in the memoir is at least sensitive even if it is not classified, and there's an equally good chance there is some classified information.
2. The actual suit doesn't need the book to contain classified information, they can block it entirely based on process.
That's a good and helpful answer. It would be helpful to have substantial examples of (1).
(2) seems to be the thing that other commentators are claiming is being weaponized for soft-censorship (especially wrt Snowden not being in a position to use an internal three-letter-agency process to publish, and the fact that said three-letter-agencies would likely block publication using their internal processes).
Regarding (2) do you happen to know if there are just-the-government-following-standard-operating-proceedure and non-political examples of agencies blocking the proceeds of books/memoirs based on the process?
The example that comes to mind for me is Patraeus's memoirs - which was widely political and scandalous but still agencies did not seek to withhold profits from book sales.
Any examples of where (2) being used day-to-day as SOP?
Readit News
> The government may steal a dollar, but it cannot erase the idea that earned it. I wrote this book, Permanent Record, for you, and I hope the government's ruthless desperation to prevent its publication only inspires you read it—and then gift it to another.
> The court's ruling is a hack intended to circumvent First Amendment limits on what the gov't can censor. They can't (yet) ban the book, so they ban profit to try and prevent such books from being written in the first place.
I don't see how you could eliminate such a claim without also eliminating the ability of the government to require and enforce secrecy from private contractors and employees more generally. For example, imagine IRS workers writing a tell-all book about the tax returns of various people.
IMO Snowden is a persecuted patriot and should be pardoned for any and all crimes (notwithstanding the legitimacy of some of the alleged crimes). But that doesn't mean the government doesn't have legitimate interests in censuring some forms of information. "Free speech" is a term of art and until very recently in nobody's wildest imagination would it cover the disclosure in the first instance of internal government data by government employees and contractors.
I'm sure he'll just get a huge advance on the next book and most of this will come out in the wash.
I guess he's still profiting from other markets?
> I don't own the rights—the publisher does—but if you're extremely online, you can find a copy in the usual places.
I noticed that there seems to be a trend to use legal technicalities to enforce bizarre rules that completely defy the intent of the constitution.
I'd be questioning whether it should be legal for any company or agency to force prospective employees to sign away their most basic human rights as part of a work contract.
Same thing goes for big corporations like Google which use contractual clauses to take possession of their employees' personal side projects. That is BS.
How would they like it if the government told CEOs and other corporate executives that in order to be an American citizen and live in America, they need to sign away their rights to all the work they did and all the assets they amassed while living in the US? Imagine if every developed country in the world demanded the same.
That's what it's like in today's institution and corporation-dominated world. You can't work for a decent wage unless you're prepared to give up all your basic rights. It's disturbing that nobody is protesting this. It ought to be criminal.
If the company can't make sure that employees don't work on side projects during company time then it's because managers are incompetent and such poorly run company doesn't deserve any legal protection.
Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes; And whereas it is generally true that that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those person, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked:...
Bill 79 was mostly about public schooling, but it contains the kernel of an argument for more open governance and against ubiquitous secrecy in language like "give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes".
But the way the law works is they get to retire in peace.
I don't think the latter should be enforceable by a contract. I think any review/editorial process should be the writer's own responsibility.
Democracies can't keep secrets, all the oversight mechanisms eventually rely on voters and fail if voters don't know what is going on. Making it clear to government employees that they will be sacked if they talk about something is fine. Short-term classification is theoretically a problem but workable in practice.
However it is well worth noting that capability related to PRISM probably started under Bush, expanded under Obama and may already have been used to surveil a presidential candidate with what is being revealed about the Trump campaign. That isn't a lot of political generations. Who knows what the democrat campaign will be subjected to by the current administration. We still might not know the full details of what is happening if classified capability is involved. From a systems perspective this is a rapidly developing disaster where voters can't make good decisions because information is being hidden. So yes classified info is antithetical to free speech.
>That's what it's like in today's institution and corporation-dominated world. You can't work for a decent wage unless you're prepared to give up all your basic rights. It's disturbing that nobody is protesting this. It ought to be criminal.
You can still work in tech for a decent wage, without having to sign away your personal projects or free speech. It's difficult to have much sympathy towards those who choose to work for Google et el and then complain about the conditions of their employment. They signed up for it despite there being other options.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/obamas-...
Deleted Comment
If the US Government intends to capture the profits from this book, then there is ample incentive to purchase copies for public consumption as it is now effectively purchased at-cost.
Section 2 states: "I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in this order, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order."
Where Snowden, or people similar to him, fall within the category of persons described within Section 1.
[1]:https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/0...
Dead Comment
I know "bitcoin" and all that, but if you're goal is to find some sort of legal loophole I don't think this is it.
Deleted Comment
The government is happy to enable such actions for the wealthy plutocrats of the world. So why not use such a loophole to undermine their ability sanction individuals.
Isn't Snowden's book an auto-biographical memoir? Given this, is there really classified information contained in the book? Can someone who has read it give an example?
I've watched Snowden's Rogan interview, where he covers the material in the book, and I don't remember anything that was classified.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/path-dependence-and-pre-publicat...
[2] https://shadowproof.com/2019/12/18/us-government-censorship-...
Another commentator wrote something similar here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837795
There's a thought experiment in that thread about whether or not pulling proceeds and profit is standard operating proceedure or really arbitrarity and politically applied. Do you happen to know if there are examples of this pattern and process being applied in non-politically motivated situations?
Regardless, their point is that Snowden did not send the book in for approval/redaction before publishing, as would be required of any former employee of a three-letter agency writing about such things.
1. It's highly likely (you said definitely) given the person and subject that some information in the memoir is at least sensitive even if it is not classified, and there's an equally good chance there is some classified information.
2. The actual suit doesn't need the book to contain classified information, they can block it entirely based on process.
That's a good and helpful answer. It would be helpful to have substantial examples of (1).
(2) seems to be the thing that other commentators are claiming is being weaponized for soft-censorship (especially wrt Snowden not being in a position to use an internal three-letter-agency process to publish, and the fact that said three-letter-agencies would likely block publication using their internal processes).
Regarding (2) do you happen to know if there are just-the-government-following-standard-operating-proceedure and non-political examples of agencies blocking the proceeds of books/memoirs based on the process?
The example that comes to mind for me is Patraeus's memoirs - which was widely political and scandalous but still agencies did not seek to withhold profits from book sales.
Any examples of where (2) being used day-to-day as SOP?