Edward Snowden book

The U.S. government is once again trying to silence Edward Snowden — this time with a lawsuit arguing that he should have allowed the CIA and NSA to censor his new memoir before publication.

The book doesn’t contain any secrets that haven’t already been made public; the government simply doesn’t want more discussion and debate of the mass surveillance systems he revealed.

The good news is that the six-year attempt to silence Snowden has so far failed spectacularly.

This new lawsuit shows that the government remains determined to silence whistleblowers and journalists.

  Glenn Greenwald email

Also, they just don't want him profiting from the sales. And it's an embarrassment all over again.

Citing what First Amendment advocates have called an "unconstitutional" system of controlling what federal employees can and cannot say about their work, President 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."

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.

  Salon

I think it's going to be a hard suit for the government to win, since there are no new secrets revealed, and anyone could have written the book using information already reported in newspapers.  That is, it WOULD be hard if the GOP didn't have the federal courts packed.

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.

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. Pre-publication review gives the government far too much power to suppress speech that the public has a right to hear."