US District Judge Liam O'Grady in Alexandria, Virginia ruled that former National Security Agency contractor violated secrecy agreements with the US government that allow it to claim proceeds from a memoir he published earlier this year, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Snowden published 'Permanent Record, the book where he identified himself as a whistleblower without submitting it for a pre-publication review, in violation of agreements he signed with both the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency.
In the book, Snowden revealed details about the government's mass collection of emails, phone calls and internet activity in the name of national security.
Brett Max Kaufman, an attorney with the ACLU's Centre for Democracy and lawyer for Snowden, said "It's farfetched to believe that the government would have reviewed Mr Snowden's book or anything else he submitted in good faith," Kaufman said in a statement. "For that reason, Mr Snowden preferred to risk his future royalties than to subject his experiences to improper government censorship." He added that the legal team disagrees with the ruling and is reviewing its options.
The federal government's lawsuit instead of attempting to limit the book's distribution, asked the judge to allow the government to collect all the proceeds from the book.
Grady wrote that Snowden, who now lives in Russia was required to allow the government to review anything he planned to publish "containing any mention of intelligence data or activities, or any other information or material which is...known to be classified". She ruled that the ill-gotten gains from breach of contract be turned over to the US government.
Snowden lawyers argued that the book contains no material that hadn't previously been made public and that the government had already broken the secrecy agreements by indicating that it wouldn't give his book a fair prepublication review.
Snowden, who worked at the CIA before a stint as a contractor for the National Security Agency, flew to Hong Kong in 2013 after quitting his job. There, he began disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified documents from the NSA to journalists.
Snowden exposed national security operations around the world by the US and its allies, for which he was booked under the Espionage Act
