United States Obtains Final Judgement and Permanent Injunction Against Snowden
justice.gov
justice.gov
Can you cite any cases of this? Google suing people first is very rare.
When you sign a clearence they tell you in the required training this is so you cannot profit off of the info you learn, even in fiction.
Has an obvious point of keeping you from having a financial motivation to breach that clearence.
> In September 2019, the United States filed a lawsuit against Snowden, who published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA. The lawsuit alleged that Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed. Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Snowden has given public speeches on intelligence-related matters, also in violation of his non-disclosure agreements.
Gotta love America. We're not going after you for whistleblowing on systematically illegal activity by the NSA. We just want your money.
It's trivial to show that he didn't seek permission before publish, and violating an NDA is a civil issue. Because trials in absentia are typically not allowed for felonies, I don't think anything can happen with the criminal charges against him until he's physically present.
Yes, the US is doing that. Just not in this lawsuit. As I noted upthread, this lawsuit is only the civil lawsuit; there is a separate criminal lawsuit still in progress.
This ruling is limited to the jurisdiction of this court (i.e. the US). They can demand that Snowden not profit of his book in other countries, but they can't enforce their demands in those contries unless they countries agree (or are /made/ to agree) to submit to the jurisdiction of a foreign court.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_v_Blake
I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision for him to make. I would've done the same in the same position, though, but I am a single male without companies, properties, extended family reputations and so forth to protect so it's easy for guys like us to be so "noble".
My head will probably asplode if Trump pardons him next term.
Downvoters: Here is the Inspector General's report on the FBI's abuse of FISA against the Trump campaign: https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
The FBI "persistently deceived a secret court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official".
Why is that all you think you need to know? There are something like 30 other things to vote for on my local ballot that matter and this is true to varying extents in most every place.
Now, don't say you had no choice in the matter.
Although pragmatically I do find myself in the novel position of needing to support the status quo corporate authoritarian, as societal collapse is not conducive to freedom.
OK let's revise the options: I'm going to amputate either your left arm or your right thumb. It's quite obvious that you should rather lose your right thumb. And I gave you the opportunity to make a choice. If you disagree that this is democracy, then you secretly want to lose your left arm. Definitely not a leftist.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/heres-h...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/magazine/trump-voter-frau...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/gerrymanderin...
I don't mean to distract from your main point, but IMO the only betrayal was by the NSA/CIA. Snowden was simply upholding his civic responsibilities.
Unfortunately it also just happens to be the government that gets to decide what penalties there are for this sort of thing, even though the people were also betrayed by the three-letter agencies.
And having gotten federal clearance in the past, I remember lots of very forbidding language indicating the extensive penalties that would occur if that clearance was violated. Even the guy who got pardoned by Trump, Kristian Saucier, who took a few pictures inside of a submarine where he worked[1], was basically ruined until pardon - prison, not honorable discharge, etc... 63 months of prison!
That's how serious the federales are about enforcing classification and generally, I agree with it. Except in the case of exposing massive unconstitutional abuses of power including the wholesale disregard and contempt for the 4th amendment.
It also allowed people like Bill Binney to come out to expand further on those revelations.
>District court
Any lawyers in here that can explain if this means it can’t be appealed?
Generally, the appellate (circuit) courts do not get involved until a case has been completely adjudicated in a district court. There are many orders that a district court may issue while a case is pending, and it would be incredibly taxing on the appellate system if litigants could complain to the appellate courts about every perceived error that emerges during the case in a piecemeal manner. It is in the interests of judicial economy to ensure that all errors are addressed concurrently as part of a single appeal. So the appellate courts will not take a case on appeal until the district court has issued a final judgment disposing of all issues that are in dispute. The final judgment would typically be issued subsequent to, e.g., a motion to dismiss the complaint, or a jury's verdict. Once that final judgment is filed by the district court, then the case is ripe for appeal to the relevant circuit court (depending on which jurisdiction the district court is located). Then, once the circuit court issues its final judgment, that judgment can in turn be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Note that there are some exceptions to the general rule, in which case a litigant can initiate what's called an interlocutory appeal, which just means that you can appeal from a single order while the underlying case is still pending.
A second-level breach of trust, huh.
Also:
> 56 specific speeches
Heh.
> The United States’ lawsuit did not seek to stop or restrict the publication or distribution of Permanent Record. Rather, ... the government sought to recover all proceeds earned by Snowden ...
Even if you ignore all context regarding Snowden, how does this make any sense? The crime is to make classified information available to the public. Therefore, the government ... does not actually care to retract that information but will instead take your money.
The book may or not contain sensitive information.
It probably does not, otherwise, the government would be pushing to suppress it.
It could simply be a legal decision, in that, they may not actually have the ability or right to block it unless it does contain sensitive information, so this is all they can do. Or it could be possible the CIA/NSA for whatever reason actually want the book to be published. Or perhaps there is some kind of unknown policy that specifically forbids those from doing such things from profiting in such a manner and the policy is just being carried out. Nobody at the CIA is going to care about the money involved.
It is odd though.
The information is already released. Pushing to suppress it would be ineffectual while confirming that the book contains sensitive information.
We don't know that though. Snowden spent a lot of time doing what he did, and still has a ton of insider information.
Anything he talks about in terms of his experience as a contract is probably subject to the agreement.
If you work for Apple, and then write a book talking about all of the meetings, transactions, decision inputs, criteria for projects, talk about projects that never came to light etc. - they probably would probably sue and try to stop publication.
So it's hard to say exactly what is going on.
The only thing that trying to stop publication does is confirm to everyone that the information was valuable, giving credibility to it when before we didn't know how credible it was.
https://gizmodo.com/the-cia-has-to-approve-every-script-for-...
"The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA agent. And since he knows all kinds of stuff that the CIA would like to keep secret, they've reserved the right to censor anything they don't like on the show."
Paragraph 5 spells the forfeiture of royalties pretty clearly, among other things.
SF-312: https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/SF312-13.pdf?forceDownload=1
2. They can't prosecute Snowden because he's not in the US, but they can prevent him from profiting from the NDA violation in the US.
> This lawsuit is separate from the criminal charges brought against Snowden for his alleged disclosures of classified information. This lawsuit is a civil action, and based solely on Snowden’s failure to comply with the clear pre-publication review obligations included in his signed non-disclosure agreements.
On the one hand, I served in the US military, took an oath, love my country, and value keeping my word. I have little respect for someone who went into a position of trust with intent to betray.
On the other hand, his actions brought to light questionable activity by our intelligence service.
I just don't know. It seems weird but I kinda don't care what happens to him.
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-...
Put another way: Hopefully you were taught that it is your duty not to obey an unlawful order from a superior.
I don't know where you got the idea that he began his career with an intent to leak details of the government's illegal actions. According to him, he came across the report that finally led to the decision purely by accident.
His actions are only seen as a 'sin' if you already agree his whistleblowing wasn't warranted.
Sure, he likely signed a new contract with BAH. If that's where the line between ethical and unethical behavior is located, I guess my worldview needs calibration.
I see you've been downvoted. I upvoted your comment, since you posted a factual link and contributed to the discussion.
What evidence is there that Snowden went into his position with an intent to betray?
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-...
These are ancient questions, so there's plenty of sources to help you weigh your answer.
Snowden thought loyalty to certain principles outweighed loyalty to the system. Ultimately, you'll have to decide whether you see sense in that or not.
I do care. I don't agree with Snowden on everything he says, but I agree with what he's done: whistleblowing on something the public needed to know about, and seeking refuge from an unfair and unconstitutional trial.
It’s clear that he didn’t enter the intelligence field specifically to commit crimes against the US. He grew up in a government family, joined the Army before being discharged due to injury, and then entered intelligence.
Before claiming what he did was betrayal, it’s pretty important to look at the circumstances he acted under and how he disseminated the leaked documents.
Speaking of betrayal, he saw the highest ranking intelligence officials blatantly lying to Congress in oversight hearings because he knew all about the domestic spying. The whole “you can’t handle the truth” attitude that was revealed by the military brass was an absolute disgrace and has deeply damaged trust in the US government.
Snowden also placed numerous boundaries around how the information he gave to the Guardian could be published by having final approval on stories. He expressly forbade fishing expeditions and only permitted journalists to write stories that he deemed were in the public interest and not a threat to personnel or ongoing military operations. You’re welcome to review that reporting and decide for yourself if any of it was published purely with intent to damage US national security. Based on what he walked away with, if his goal was truly to undermine national security, he undoubtedly left major ammunition untouched.
When you took your oath to serve, it was to serve the United States, and not Michael Hayden, John Brennan, etc., correct? If you were in a position to see people like that lying to Congress regarding the oversight of civilians, would you not do something about it? Many before Snowden tried, like Thomas Drake, Bill Binney, etc. They followed the rules and didn’t walk out with receipts, and their lives were completely ruined because of it.