Thread by @ErrataRob

This mischaracterizes how things work.

Everyone in the intelligence community signs an agreement that they'll submit such things for prepublication revue. The government similarly goes after anybody who doesn't -- whether they be Snowden or anybody else.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1174052444181028866

Here is the agreement Snowden signed multiple times when he was employed by or contracted with the CIA and NSA:
fas.org/sgp/othergov/s…

The form Snowden signed specifically says he forfeits all royalties if he doesn't submit for prepublication review:

The government isn't trying to stop publication. They can't, because of that First Amendment thingy. However, they have an enormous interest in preventing people in the future from dumping secrets, so this isn't to punish Snowden so much as deter future people from doing this.

Note that this doesn't mean the book contains any important secrets. The pinheaded bureaucrats making these lawsuits don't care about national security so much as their own power/privilege to review such books.

I mention this because I read such books occasionally with blacked-out sections, then search online for what was in those blacked-out sections, and usually find it, on discussion forums from people discussing the book.

In other words, authors already self-censor anything important, so what prepublication review boards end up doing is blacking-out arbitrary non-important stuff.

In this case, they probably would've blacked-out things that are already public, such any mention of "PRISM", because this is still officially classified despite being public.

Snowden was a jerk, here. If he wasn't, he'd've submitted it for prepublication review, then simply "greyed-out" everything they tried to censor, instead of "blacked-out". Think of the lulz people, THINK OF THE LULZ that could've happened. Such a missed opportunity.

(by "greyed-out" I mean "highlighted with grey" rather than "erased with black", so that we could still read what was underneath)