Tuesday, September 17, 2019
by
Common Dreams
Edward Snowden Responds After Trump DOJ Sues Whistleblower Over New Memoir
the US Government 'Does Not Want You to Read'
The Justice Department filed suit the day Snowden's memoir Permanent Record
was published.
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday against government
whistleblower Edward Snowden over his publication of the memoir Permanent
Record. (Photo: Antonio Marín Segovia/Flickr/cc)
Citing what First Amendment advocates have called an "unconstitutional"
system of controlling what federal employees can and cannot say about their
work, President Donald Trump's Justice Department on Tuesday filed a lawsuit
against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden over the publication of his new
memoir.
The day the book Permanent Record was released, the DOJ filed its lawsuit
claiming Snowden had published without submitting the book for
"pre-publication review."
"[Snowden] hopes that today's lawsuit by the United States government will
bring the book to the attention of more readers throughout the world."
Ben Wizner, ACLU
The DOJ is not seeking to block publication of the book but is instead
arguing that Snowden should not profit from the story of his 2013 decision
to leak files about the NSA's phone and email spying program since he didn't
have permission from the government to share the information.
The government wants all proceeds from the book and is asking MacMillan
Publishers to keep any revenue from being transferred to Snowden.
Government approval is required of federal employees before they write or
speak publicly about their worka requirement that the ACLU says has kept
millions of Americans from being able to speak openly about the government.
Snowden tweeted about the lawsuit shortly after it was reported, including a
link to his book's page on Amazon and the words, "This is the book the
government does not want you to read."
"Mr. Snowden wrote this book to continue a global conversation about mass
surveillance and free societies that his actions helped inspire," said Ben
Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and a
lawyer for Snowden. "He hopes that today's lawsuit by the United States
government will bring the book to the attention of more readers throughout
the world.
"This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously
published by respected news organizations," added Wizner. "Had Mr. Snowden
believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would
have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that
facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow
classified."
The Movement for a People's Party decried the Justice Department for
continuing its "war on whistleblowers" targeting Snowden and others who in
recent years have publicized government secrets, including war crimes.
The ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute are currently challenging
the pre-publication review in court, arguing it violates the First and Fifth
Amendments.
"The prepublication process in its current form is broken and
unconstitutional, and it needs to go," Brett Max Kaufman, staff attorney
with the ACLU's Center for Democracy, said in April when the groups filed
suit. "It's one thing to censor the nuclear codes, but it's another to
censor the same information high schoolers are pulling from Wikipedia.
Prepublication review gives the government far too much power to suppress
speech that the public has a right to hear."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute,
called the agreement that demands federal workers' silence a "far-reaching
censorship system" that "simply can't be squared with the Constitution."
"The government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide
national-security secrets," said Jaffer, "but this system sweeps too
broadly, fails to limit the discretion of government censors, and suppresses
political speech that is vital to informing public debate."
