Virginia's eastern district federal court said that — Feds can steal Edward Snowden's book money

© 2019 Peter Free

 

20 December 2019

 

 

Gestapo-like legal thinking?

 

Whistleblower Edward Snowden recently published his book, Permanent Record.

 

The Feds did not like that.

 

Snowden had not gotten their "spy apparatus" to approve the book's contents for release.

 

It would not do — in the Feds' paranoia-prone eyes — to have Snowden make money for revealing what an oppressive establishment the American Security State actually is.

 

Thus, the United States sued Snowden for breach of non-disclosure contract, as well as for allegedly violated fiduciary duties.

 

 

Naturally

 

Given the lack of nuance that virtually all legal apparatchiks bring with them to the autocracy-inclined American federal bench, district judge Liam O'Grady ruled that Snowden was toast.

 

What else was a "good" federal judge to do?

 

 

Because both the CIA and NSA Secrecy Agreements prohibit unauthorized publication of certain information, and Permanent Record discusses those types of information, the Government is entitled to summary judgment . . . . [meaning that Snowden loses and legal proceedings end in the Feds' favor.]

 

Snowden's public comments and displays, which occurred without prepublication review, breached the CIA and NSA Secrecy Agreements and their attendant fiduciary duties.

 

The Government is entitled to summary judgment . . . .

 

Memorandum opinion and order, US v Edward Snowden, Civil Action No. l:19-cv-l 197, US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (17 December 2019) (at pages 13-14) (excerpts)

 

 

Notice a couple things about this "societal" charade

 

First, the Federal Government gets to financially profit by:

 

(a) having done — and continuing to do — the arguably bad things that Snowden exposed

 

 

and it further gets to

 

(b) steal money from the publication effort that Snowden put into documenting those evils for the American public.

 

 

Federal profit like this — essentially acquired by debatably "doing the Devil's work" — exactly parallels the circumstances that I noted yesterday. Those regarding the American military's behemoth Congress-bestowed funding, despite its:

 

 

(a) incessant lying

 

and

 

(b) killing people (including our own) in strategically unnecessary droves.

 

 

So, for emphasis, let's recap the Snowden matter

 

Government gets you sign non-closure agreements.

 

The employment process further requires that you take on fiduciary duty to your Federal Masters.

 

 

This purported "fiduciary" relationship, by the way — given the power disparity between massive Government and the lowly contracting employee or contractor — gets the semantics of the term "fiduciary" almost entirely backwards.

 

 

Then, when you discover Federal wrongdoing, you must get these same wrong-committing Feds to confess their illegalities — via the administrative, non-legal channels that they themselves own.

 

How likely is that?

 

And if you do not immediately knuckle under to this one-sided federal administrative process — and instead you go public, as Snowden did — you are designated an Enemy of the State.

 

American force of Law then takes over. And the Feds use that equally Establishment-oriented system to enforce the contracts that they forced upon you.

 

Off to Penniless Heaven (or worse) you go.

 

 

The moral? — In an effectively totalitarian society like ours, Truth itself is against the law

 

Goosestep with enthusiasm, sheep!