Wed 18 September 2019:
The US Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against Edward Snowden that would recover all proceeds of his recently released memoir, the department announced on Tuesday. The charges coincide with the official publication of the book, which is titled Permanent Record.
Snowden’s memoir was allegedly not submitted to the CIA or NSA for pre-publication review, a required practice among former employees of intelligence agencies. As such, the department considers the book a breach of Snowden’s fiduciary obligations, and names the publishers as co-defendants in the suit.
The government of the United States has just announced a lawsuit over my memoir, which was just released today worldwide. This is the book the government does not want you to read: (link corrected) https://t.co/JS1AJ6QlXg
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 17, 2019
Given the still-classified programs and materials discussed in the memoir, it is unlikely that the book would have been approved for publication by the agencies. Snowden remains a de facto fugitive from the US government, and would likely face charges under the Espionage Act if he returned to the country. But the new civil case could nonetheless cause problems for Snowden, potentially enjoining his publishers from releasing any of the proceeds from the book.
Crucially, the suit does not seek to block the release of Snowden’s memoir, as doing so would be illegal under the First Amendment. Still, many of Snowden’s US defenders see the lawsuit as raising real questions about the constitutionality of the pre-publication review system.
Others see the lawsuit as an attempt to distract from Snowden’s disclosures. “If only the Justice Department was as concerned with the systematic legal violations carried out by the US government’s mass surveillance programs as they are about trying to blunt the impact of a personal memoir by the person who alerted to public,” Freedom of the Press Foundation director Trevor Timm said. “This misguided lawsuit is all the more reason everyone should read Snowden’s book.”
United States civil lawsuit… by Anonymous x0vjYq on Scribd
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