Snowden didn't take an "oath of secrecy"

[ancianita]

90. How are they the same, though? I don't even see the legal liability levels as the same.

I don't want to go on and on about this, but other DU'ers on other threads have said that one has to be able to distinguish real espionage info theft from other kinds of information theft.

If you reveal the technical details on making an atomic bomb, that's not a matter of political opinion and revealing those secrets is not political speech, thus, it's not entitled to the greatest protection of the First Amendment. Then a person who knows those technical secrets is required to maintain the secrecy about them. The same is true of troop movements or new fighter plane technology, etc. The Espionage Act and secrecy laws are relevant to apply to secrets of a technical or strategic military nature.

Trade secrets? Ms. Merkel's phone numbers? Foreign leaders porn habits? Proprietary patent/extraction corporate info? Not at all, which is why Merkel and other leaders didn't indict the Obama administration and NSA in the international court.

If anything, Booz, Allen, Hamilton deserves to lose its NSA contract for failure to properly monitor an employee's theft of corporate, diplomatic or surveillance intel that is political in nature.

As you probably understand, the information that Snowden has provided us concerns issues of public policy, political opinions and facts of great political importance. Greenwald himself gives all credit all the time to Snowden, who revealed what he knew in order to obtain political action, to inform the public of what he perceived and what many, many Americans would perceive as a political policy that is wrong.

If the issue here is whether breaking a NDA is illegal, it seems to me to be a constitutional right that holds the greater public interest over those of the contractors or the branch of the federal government under which the NSA operates. If you make a NDA equal to a 'secrecy oath,' either is still trumped by one's duty to uphold the Constitution, whether that's expressed or implied.

Others here have said that because Snowden's revelations are political in nature, they constitute political speech and they are subject to the highest First Amendment protections. They hold that prohibiting the speech of Snowden, under any corporate contract or oath, is unconstitutional.

I agree with them. I thought the legality of what Snowden did was resolved here days ago.