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The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

reason.com

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Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#91

Post by snapetom »

buboard wrote: post #75
snapetom wrote: post #58

Playing Devil's Advocate, the Feds are going after Snowden not on the premise of censoring him. Instead, they are arguing that as part of his employment agreement, they have the right to vet anything IP related he publicly discloses. It's similar to many employer-employee relationships. I've had to pass my slide deck to my manager to screen before speaking at conferences and many companies have an officially sanction…

i don't think people are arguing the legality of the ruling but the pettiness of it and how it makes them look even worse

Clearly it's petty. The Feds have a history of taking one misguided step based on ignorance and never backing down no matter how stupid they look. We don't disagree on that. However, a lot of the comments here are based arguing First Amendment. Employees enter in all sorts of employee-employer agreements that limit First Amendment rights.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#92

Post by kube-system »

lacker wrote: post #24
onetimemanytime wrote: post #20

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.) But, why should he profit ??

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. Thousands of them are signed every day, and they hold up just like any other contract.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#93

Post by JDiculous »

bigwavedave wrote: post #64
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#94

Post by jethro_tell »

mark-r wrote: post #41
abfan1127 wrote: post #8

Some people are saying to release the book. It seems the better thing to do is sell it for cost. I'd buy it if the the Feds didn't get a dollar.

I wonder if you can buy a foreign version from Amazon?

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.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#95

Post by jethro_tell »

rhacker wrote: post #85
mywittyname wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, our inept Congress decided over the years to cede so much of their governing ability to the president. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but my understanding is that executive authority is quite vast and grows each year.

I mean yeah, they might be able to arrest someone. The unfortunate aspect is that it is now up to the arrested person to tell the judge that they were arrested because of an executive order which only applies to the rules that govern federal agencies - and that they, and higher courts alone can overturn that order (or the act of arrest due to the order).

Which is probably a blocker for a large number of people. That would very much mess with my family as I don't have anyone to help with my kids while I'm indisposed. It also makes it awkward for companies to accept donations on his behalf which will lessen access to many people.

This stuff is never to block all transactions, it's to limit them to only a few and cut the flow substantially.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#97

Post by sprash »

ur-whale wrote: post #32

Looks like the gov't hasn't heard of the Streisand effect. Which in is case, is a very good thing.

Government institutions are very well aware of the Streisand effect. This is rather a sign of the fact that this book may contain only useless information or even disinformation.

Re: The Feds Get Permission to Seize Edward Snowden's Book Profits

#100

Post by mattynice »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #3
alexnewman wrote: post #2

Edward Snowden just gave me permission to steal and distribute this book. Have fun

did he? I noticed he wrote: 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. -- https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1207624251953549312

He most certainly did:

In response to: "Perhaps you'll consider releasing it under creative commons 2.0 at some point :)."

He said: "I don't own the rights—the publisher does—but if you're extremely online, you can find a copy in the usual places."

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1207628691234316288

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