Edward Snowden: Trump administration sues NSA whistleblower over new memoir

The United States has filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor and Central Intelligence Agency employee who in 2013 leaked documents about US surveillance, saying his new memoir violates non-disclosure agreements.

Mr Snowden’s book, entitled Permanent Record, was published this week.

The book provides new insight into how he came to smuggle top-secret files from the US government concerning telephone and Internet surveillance to reporters at The Guardian and The Washington Post, according to a review in the New Yorker.

However, the Justice Department says he published the book without submitting it to intelligence agencies for review, “in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed”, according to a press release.

The department also says previous speeches given by Mr Snowden to the public have violated non-disclosure agreements.

The United States now seeks “all proceeds earned” by Mr Snowden from the publication. It will not seek to end the book’s distribution.

“Intelligence information should protect our nation, not provide personal profit,” said G Zachary Terwilliger, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in the press release. “This lawsuit will ensure that Edward Snowden receives no monetary benefits from breaching the trust placed in him.”

In a tweet on Tuesday, Mr Snowden appeared to use the lawsuit as a marketing tool, writing “The government of the United States has just announced a lawsuit over my memoir, which was just released today worldwide.”

“This is the book the government does not want you to read,” the tweet continued, linking to the Amazon page on which customers could find his book.

Trevor Timm, executive director Freedom of the Press Foundation, for which Mr Snowden serves as president, also released a statement, saying “If only the Justice Department was as concerned with the systematic legal violations carried out by the US government’s mass surveillance programmes as they are about trying to blunt the impact of a personal memoir.”

The lawsuit is being handled by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.

Mr Snowden, who fled to Russia to avoid criminal charges in 2013, says he would be willing to return to stand trial in the United States on condition he was allowed to present a public interest defence - meaning the jury would have an opportunity to discuss whether his actions were justified, rather than just whether he had broken the law.

In an interview with CBS, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor described the request as “the bottom-line that any American should require”.

“One of the big topics in Europe right now is should Germany and France invite me in to get asylum ... And of course I would like to return to the United States,” Mr Snowden, 36, said.

“That is the ultimate goal,” he added, “But if I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom-line demand that we all have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial. And that's the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won't provide access to what's called a public interest defence.”

Mr Snowden has long described himself as a whistle-blower who leaked secret information about the NSA spying on the American public, before fleeing the country by travelling through Hong Kong to Russia, where he has been living under asylum.