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Books Government Privacy Security The Almighty Buck The Courts United States

Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can't Profit From His Book (gizmodo.com) 104

Posted by BeauHD from the approval-required dept.
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Tuesday that whistleblower Edward Snowden will not be allowed to profit from sales of his memoir Permanent Record. The reason? He didn't receive approval from the CIA and NSA. Gizmodo reports: Permanent Record, which was released in September, tells the story of Snowden's decision to become a whistleblower and expose the ways that the U.S. government was spying on Americans in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Snowden fled the U.S. in 2013 after several new stories were written based on documents he leaked and now lives in Moscow, Russia.

Snowden didn't seek approval from the national security agencies where he had signed secrecy agreements before publication, and while the government didn't move to stop the book from being published, it does want any money he makes from the endeavor. Snowden's U.S.-based publishers, MacMillan and Holtzbrinck, are also named in the lawsuit. "Snowden's publication of Permanent Record without prior submission for prepublication review breached the CIA and NSA Secrecy agreement and the attendant fiduciary duties set forth in those agreements," federal judge Liam O'Grady wrote in his 14-page decision. "According to government filings, Snowden signed three Secrecy Agreements with the CIA in November of 2005, August of 2006, and April of 2009. He also signed three NSA Secrecy Agreements in July of 2005, May of 2009, and March of 2013. All of those agreements were unambiguous, according to the judge, and required Snowden to get a prepublication review before the book came out. "During each of [Snowden's public talks via video link at a TED conference and various universities], Snowden caused to be displayed and discussed, among other things, at least one slide which was marked classified at the Top Secret level, and other intelligence-related activities of the CIA and NSA," the judge wrote. "He never submitted any materials or slides to the CIA or NSA for prepublication review, and never received written authority to make his public remarks or publish his slides."

It's unclear if Snowden will appeal the ruling.
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Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can't Profit From His Book More

Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can't Profit From His Book

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  • He could always have it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:11PM (#59534352)

    published outside the country, and people could download it from some .ru site.

    • It's only in the US that rule is truly applicable.

      Publish in China and it would be a new headache for the diplomats.

      But he don't have much to lose these days, and when someone only have little to lose they are really dangerous.

      But the US should worry more about the government and terrorists on home soil than what Snowden can do these days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      sell the rights to a publisher, have the publisher profit from it and have a real headache for the court systems. do they want to upheld their copyright system or not - how about can the newspapers profit from their insider info? they can and will and that has been upheld by courts.

      though I think the real aim is to just block publication of it, not him profiting from it as such.

      also .. did clinton etc who have memoirs written up seek permissions from all the agencies? just having those agreements is usual

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by uncqual ( 836337 )

        Snowden violated his contract with the government by not getting pre-approval. Newspapers who use information they get, even from unauthorized sources such as Snowden, have no such contract.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          Snowden violated his contract with the government by not getting pre-approval. Newspapers who use information they get, even from unauthorized sources such as Snowden, have no such contract.

          Well, I meant that he could just use the same loophole you know and the money would go or not go to him later as a donation. Or the us publisher would pay license fees to a russian entity that is the publisher. all the profits after that would be given to usa government (not much, basically accounting trickery about what is profit).

          But like, in essence, how is a publisher different from a newspaper who pays their sources as they often do?

      • What you're describing is exactly whats happening. Snowden isn't self-publishing, he's going through a publishing house. The publisher is free to profit from the book all it wants (because they didn't sign an agreement with the CIA), but the fraction of the profit that would go to Snowden (the royalties) will go the CIA instead. Nothing about it is a headache for the court, they basically just tell the publisher to put a different name on the checks because Snowden violated his contract with the CIA. Obviou

  • Snowden is not the last (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He is a real wistleblower (even if he did it wrong and illegally.) Very soon we will get a new wistleblower and the deepstate will be revealed. We may not ever know his/her name but Durham does.

    • The only thing we are learning about the "deep state" is that it consists of highly intelligent, highly talented patriotic Americans.

      And you are a Russian tool.

      • If they really are intelligent then they should change their operative style to something different to render any knowledge that Snowden has toothless.

        • They already buried Snowden by calling him a traitor and dropping news stories about him as fast as possible. They don't need to make his information "toothless".

          Ask anyone outside of the tech-sphere "who is Edward Snowden?" They will either call him a traitor or not know him at all.

    • Re:Snowden is not the last (Score:5, Informative)

      by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:36PM (#59534432)

      He is a real wistleblower (even if he did it wrong and illegally.)

      By his account, which has not been credibly refuted, he attempted to use the "right" and "legal" channels as a whistle-blower and was brushed off. He only went rogue when it was apparent he either had to or just give up on it.

      It was obvious that he would have gotten nowhere near the consideration that the whistleblower on Trump's case was getting. They would have pretty much disappeared him soviet style because he was too inconvenient.

      And that is still likely what would happen to him if he just hopped a jet over and turned himself in without a prior agreement for a fair trial.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dwillden ( 521345 )
        The reason he is not considered a Whistle-blower isn't because he went outside the approved channels with his revelations about the Meta-data collection.

        He's a traitor because he couldn't just stop there. He also had to dump thousands of highly classified documents unrelated to any whistleblowing to the public, harming international relations, and intelligence gathering operations around the world. That was his act of Treason. The meta-data program needed to be released, had he stopped there your argumen

        • Re:Snowden is not the last (Score:4, Insightful)

          by captbollocks ( 779475 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @08:28AM (#59536806)

          I think Snowdon made a point of not releasing information that would harm people. As for international relations, the only people that didn't know the US was spying on everyone are mugs like yourself.

          Sure the revelations might have been used for political/diplomatic point scoring, but it hasn't stopped the US from continuing today to do exactly what Snowdon said they were doing.

          Unlike Assange who just released everything because he is an egoist and loved the attention regardless of the fallout, Snowdon did actually do a public service.

        • You really should read how treason is defined in the constitution.

        • He's a traitor because he couldn't just stop there. He also had to dump thousands of highly classified documents unrelated to any whistleblowing to the public, harming international relations, and intelligence gathering operations around the world. That was his act of Treason.

          He is not a traitor and did not commit treason. You are confusing Edward Snowden with Chelsea Manning, who did just mass dump data without a filter. Edward Snowden gave his material to a reporter, who was quite careful in what was published.

        • The reason he is not considered a Whistle-blower isn't because he went outside the approved channels with his revelations about the Meta-data collection.

          Please sit down. I've something to tell you, and it will make you sad. The reason he is not considered a whistle-blower under the relevant statutes is because he was not an employee of the US government, but instead working for a contractor to the US government. The relevant whistle-blower statues would not have applied to him.

          he is a spy and a traitor and hopefully we can get him back and prosecute him properly some day.

          Ah, like we prosecuted the infamous traitor Thomas Drake [wikipedia.org]?

          He's a traitor because he couldn't just stop there.

          Are you still sitting down? Good. No, he's not "a spy and a traitor" because he released classified info not related to

  • I bet he's not too surprised (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:14PM (#59534362) Journal

    It's relatively difficult to believe Snowden would care about the money at this point... he's given up his whole known life for his principles already.

    Predicting the US government response to this publication didn't take careful consideration by a room full of Rhodes' scholars, either.

  • theft (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:17PM (#59534368)

    this is 'pants on head' wrong and stupid.

    america, do you really want to go this direction? the whole world is watching? DO YOU EVEN CARE?

    I tought the R's (who still control the government) were all about Capitalism(tm). so, its only good for them, but not for others?

    snowden should publish with a non-US company. thing is, the US has its dirty arm everywhere, it seems.

    we need revolution. we've gone so far astray from the founding fathers' principles, that we need a v2.0 style 'do-over'. our system is broken beyond repair, at this point, if this is how we are going to act.

    • You know he broke laws and the trust he had and even his word. I am not saying he was wrong, just did it the wrong way. We now have dozens of leakers thinking they are 'doing the right thing.' He is still responsible for the laws he broke, you never know he may have got a presidential pardon but at this point when he has run away and hid in Russia after working at the CIA, it is pretty messed up. At this point we have to see him as working with the enemy, as much as we see Russia as the enemy. He is not hid

      • Re: theft (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Schmo Schollie ( 6164562 )
        A whistleblower working with classified materials can never "Do it the right way". Just proposing to expose the information in itself is a crime and there is no guarantee of actual "whistleblower protection".
        • If you follow the extradition story he never meant to end up in Russia it was just the circumstance of international politics.

          • Re: theft (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Schmo Schollie ( 6164562 )
            Why do you assume that the US would even give him a fair trial? The Julian Assange and Manning narrative shows enough about what the government does to people who "face the music". Manning was obviously tortured to the point of disassociative psychosis.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              That is why reporting a crime covered up by US gov/mil is not a crime...
              • That is why reporting a crime covered up by US gov/mil is not a crime...

                You know the pretext for Manning's situation was that he "leaked" evidence of American war crimes during operations in the middle east right? The war crimes were considered to be amongst classified information therefore he was in violation of US military policy (amongst other information).

                There is also such thing as retroactive classification. One can be punished for public dispersal of unclassified information when, after the fac

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by AHuxley ( 892839 )
                  Decades of US gov/mil and contractors have tried that. To make their crimes so "classified" that no other part of the US gov would ever be able to find out.
                  Thats why a gov/mil crime cannot be classified.
                  The other part is a duty to report a gov/mil crime on detection.
                  Found later saying "classified" does not offer a way around that duty to report.
                  But the gov/mil do keep trying to use that "classified" to keep their workers from reporting.

                  ie the
                  "the duty of all persons in service of the United Sta
                  • What you are saying is simply not true for modern times when it comes to high profile military war crimes.

                    Especially when the government now contracts third party paramilitary groups that allow the military to have a sense of "plausible deniability" if such "crimes" are committed. This goes as far back as Black Water.

                    Reporting a higher crime does not guarantee you anything. After the NSA reveals of snowden congress had meetings to assess the legality of NSA programs. They found them to be illegal/cri

            • Manning was obviously tortured to the point of disassociative psychosis.

              [Citation Required]

          • He ended up in Russia because of his stupidity. His brilliant idea was to flee the US to a country with an extradition treaty with the US.

        • A whistleblower working with classified materials can never "Do it the right way".

          Sure they can. If you'd like an example, there's this thing about Trump and Ukraine.....

          • ... and if the democrats did not hate Trump quite so much, you can bet that the whistleblower would have been outted and retaliated faster than I could type this sentence.

            See, for instance, the case of Thomas Drake, or even how the various IGs have reported on whistleblower handling [politico.com] recently.

            The trump whistleblower is the exception. (The ICIG report on the trump whistleblower's complaint [cnn.com]). The complaint was very much informed by previous whistleblower protection failures. Note that the whistleblower ha

            • ... and if the democrats did not hate Trump quite so much, you can bet that the whistleblower would have been outted and retaliated faster than I could type this sentence.

              That sounds a lot more menacing when you forget the Republicans have already outed him by repeatedly saying his name in hearings.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Reporting a crime that the US gov/mil is part of is not a "broke laws" event.

    • we need revolution.

      Good luck with that. Most people don't care. Those that do, don't agree on the direction. For every kook that wants to kill to reinstate the 10th Amendment, there is another kook that wants to fight for the Green New Deal.

      I have Netflix and pizza, so I'll skip the revolution.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        On any of the political forums where I've posted similar speculation I'm immediately slammed as a paid Russian troll, and it got me temporarily banned at one. Occam's razor really does suggest that the Democratic "leadership" don't actually **want** the presidency or the Congressional majority. In 2016 Clinton ran the worst campaign that I have seen in the 45 years that I've been watching politics, spending a frelling **BILLION DOLLARS** in order to lose to a senile orangutan that made Richard Nixon look

        • How do you even DO that?

          Hillary Clinton is an utterly awful politician surrounded by yes-people, so she never is told "you suck at this". Instead, she hears "you are so amazing". For example, she interrupted the shitstorm over the "Iran letter" to respond to the email server thing....and every single statement in her press conference about that server turned out to be a lie. Which lead to months and months of exposing those lies one by one, reinforcing the belief that she had done something wrong with the server.

          She populated h

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • No, we couldn't care less that "the world is watching". The world has made it clear on many occasions, with the ugliest possible language, that they despise us. Why would we ever care about their respect? Respect is a two-way street, you gotta give it to get it.

      Oh, and that part about the founding fathers principles is a crock. You made it quite clear you despise the Founders, so it's disingenuous to speak for them. It's the same as you trying to appeal to the sensibilities of Muslims because they're toler

    • we need revolution. we've gone so far astray from the founding fathers' principles, that we need a v2.0 style 'do-over'. our system is broken beyond repair, at this point, if this is how we are going to act.

      1.0 was Separation of Church and State.
      2.0 will be a consequence of Separation of Markets and state.

      Religions, Markets, and Governments are the three means of social control. Whenever they're not in competition, everything goes to hell.

      Crypto only ever gets better, not worse. Without control of a printi

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by C0C0C0 ( 688434 )

      I tought the R's (who still control the government) were all about Capitalism(tm). so, its only good for them, but not for others?

      This started before the "R's" came into power. It's bi-partisan nonsense, so let's be fair.

    • I tought the R's (who still control the government) were all about Capitalism(tm). so, its only good for them, but not for others?

      Remember when Republicans were for both capitalism and limiting government power?

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:20PM (#59534374)
    It's not surprising. Generally the courts haven't allowed criminals to profit from selling their story or have awarded all proceeds to the families of the victims of their crimes, and unfortunately Snowden is considered a criminal by the U.S. After Obama pardoned Manning I had hoped that Trump would pardon Snowden just to try to upstage Obama, but that was wishful thinking more than anything.

    Snowden is every bit a hero and our treatment of him shows exactly why we have so few of them. Maybe someday we'll come to our senses or we'll get a a President who's willing to not only pardon but also recognize Snowden as the kind of American that we should all aspire to be.

  • Snowden should give the Feds a giant middle finger (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Indy1 ( 99447 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:27PM (#59534394)

    and publish his book as a torrent. If he can't profit from it, he can at least spread it far and wide, and humiliate fed.gov even more.

  • Never speak truth to power. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ikhider ( 2837593 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @08:17PM (#59534554)
    In the USA, that gets you in trouble.
  • Send the money there, and do what the politicians do to get around laws... in fact send 10% of the profit to the Clinton foundation just a shit test.
  • Why isn't federal judge Liam O'Grady in jail?

    • Because jailing people for decisions you don't like is not a good thing. Especially when it's a very obvious black-and-white ruling about contract law.

      If you don't want to go through government approval before publishing your book, don't sign 6 contracts that require government approval before publishing your book.

  • Snowden should have asked for permission (Score:3)

    by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @08:57PM (#59534688)

    Then the Feds would need to put up or shut up. If they censored everything they would look ridiculous, and it could still be published overseas. And if not, then they have blessed it.

  • His whistleblowng is not relevant to this issue.

    The law required him and every NSA person to get approval. He knew this going into the job.

  • So, it'll cost less, then? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:05PM (#59534712) Homepage

    Asked if the elimination of Snowden's cut would allow for a cheaper sale price, industry spokesmen laughed and pointed out that authors hardly ever get anything, anyway.

  • Works for Apple, Amazon, Google, etc... Right?

  • He doesn't care about the money.

    This is his TESTIMONY... because you already know that any court case will not be open, given the current rules associated with trials for traitors, as the US has labeled him.

    So we get his side of the story, which we'd never get in any court coverage.

    Having purchased and read the book, it's not a comfortable read in parts, because now you (as a reader) get the most intimate thought processes about the hows and the why's of what he did. And honestly... it was a bit "voyeurist

  • Buy a European copy (Score:3)

    by yusing ( 216625 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @05:46AM (#59536364) Journal

    I should be possible to buy a copy of the book - from a publisher in Europe that would hold the funds in escrow - and have it mailed over to the US. (That was done back when the Beats were getting hit with obscenity charges.)

    Somewhat involved, yeah. But considering the effort Snowden made, seems pretty damned easy.

  • He can most certainly profit from it in the rest of the world.

    I'd be highly surprised it he could not, in the EU, Russia, China, and most east-Asian, middle-eastern, South American or African countries.

    Of courae it always depends on the amount of terrorism the "world police" bullies do in that country.

  • Since he blew up their spot, the wrongdoing he revealed hasn't been secret. Does he really need the CIA/NSA to sign off on public information? Sounds to me like they're just pissed off that he spilled the beans.

    And can they use classification to cover up criminal activity? They were waaaay off the rails, and misusing official secrecy as cover for spying on all of us. Can they really continue to pretend they have the authority to control this information?

    Seems to me that there's room for appeal. Lo

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by will_die ( 586523 )
      Does not matter it is a contract he signed with the US Government. He agreed to provide for review any material he wrote for publishing, even if it was a children book about Olivia the pig. https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/... [cia.gov]

    • Does he really need the CIA/NSA to sign off on public information?

      Yes. He signed 6 contracts saying he would let them review anything he published.

      If he wanted to publish a dictionary, it would still have to be reviewed. Even though that would be 100% public, non-governmental information.

      Also, leaking isn't declassification. The information is still considered classified by the government.

      They were waaaay off the rails, and misusing official secrecy as cover for spying on all of us

      Nope. Despite what Snowden's fans say, everything he leaked was legal.

      The phone metadata program is legal due to a 1979 SCOTUS decision that phone records don't require a warrant. T

  • Set sail for the Pirate Bay! (Score:3)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @11:18AM (#59537572)

    ... 'cuz there ain't no way I'm buying Snowden's book just to have the proceeds go to those big-brother-loving ratfucker shitheels at the NSA. And I will do so with a 100% crystal-clear and clean conscience; since that old saw about "supporting the artists" absolutely in no way whatsoever applies here.

  • I'm more surprised that judges can make this type of ruling, imagine if you are a business that makes X-Blocks and suddenly a judge decides your profits no longer belong to you
  • He was probably just upset that all that corruption got exposed.

  • "...required Snowden to get a prepublication review before the book came out. "

    he's a whistleblower, the point is that the stuff he's showing wasn't supposed to be shown and would never have been approved.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • And simply let americans buy the Canadian release on the Internet?

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