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Movies The Courts

'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks 163

An anonymous reader writes with this news from The Hollywood Reporter: Horace Edwards, who identifies himself as a retired naval officer and the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has filed a lawsuit in Kansas federal court that seeks a constructive trust over monies derived from the distribution of Citizenfour. Edwards ... seeks to hold Snowden, director Laura Poitras, The Weinstein Co., Participant Media and others responsible for "obligations owed to the American people" and "misuse purloined information disclosed to foreign enemies." It's an unusual lawsuit, one that the plaintiff likens to "a derivative action on behalf of the American Public," and is primarily based upon Snowden's agreement with the United States to keep confidentiality. ... Edwards appears to be making the argument that Snowden's security clearance creates a fiduciary duty of loyalty — one that was allegedly breached by Snowden's participation in the production of Citizenfour without allowing prepublication clearance review. As for the producers and distributors, they are said to be "aiding and abetting the theft and misuse of stolen government documents." The lawsuit seeks a constructive trust to redress the alleged unjust enrichment by the film. A 1980 case that involved a former CIA officer's book went up to the Supreme Court and might have opened the path to such a remedy.
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'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks

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  • by Roodvlees ( 2742853 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:15AM (#48659311)
    Assuming he thought this through, does that mean the US law is against the people knowing what their government is doing?
    • by khallow ( 566160 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:24AM (#48659343)
      He doesn't stand a chance because he doesn't have standing.
      • by tylikcat ( 1578365 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:39AM (#48659413)

        ...and if he did have standing, so would all other US citizens. Which would be terribly amusing.

        • by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:57AM (#48659469)

          Indeed. If such a "fiduciary duty of loyalty" really exists, then I'd love to participate in a class-action lawsuit against a bunch of our traitorous, war-criminal politicians!

          • I don't think politicians are in charge anymore. Who is? Good question.

            • politicians throughout history have rarely been 'in charge'. remember when christian bale thought raz-al-gool was the asian guy instead of liam neeson? yeah. like that.

              at the risk of recommending a 'banned book', checkout 'zinn's people's history of the united states.'
            • Answer: money

        • by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:57AM (#48659477)

          And it would call into question all the many times that the courts have said in the past that individual U.S. citizens have no standing to sue over stuff like the CIA torture program.

          • by anagama ( 611277 )

            Yeah, but in the past those lawsuits cast the Feds as the bad guys (which they are of course) but in this lawsuit, the Feds are the putative good guys (LOL). Considering how rotten and corrupt the system is, top to bottom, I would be surprised if they dismissed this case on standing grounds. They'll wiggle around that in some way because in the American court system of today, getting to a specific predetermined result by any twisted means is what counts.

            For example, when justice Roberts commented on the r

        • Only if you are filing suit against Snowden and/or Manning. Else, you've no standing if you want to know what they're doing. Because Terrorism/Pedophiles/Gambling/Drugs/Anti-corporate uprisings/Union/Commies/Islamists. Because they say so. Because they'll drag you away and hold you naked in a solitary cell until you die if you manage to score a hit against them.
          This is what tyranny means. Sadists and idiots take control - and those sadists and idiots who are not in power cheer them on vociferlously while ma

      • Lacks standing (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I agree. Another frivolous lawsuit seeking money or fame. In reality, just another loser.

      • The other reason he doesn't stand a chance is because of Hollywood accounting [wikipedia.org] which ensures that even major blockbusters never make a profit so there will be no profits to capture.
        • by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @11:26AM (#48659931) Homepage

          Ah, but remember, it cost a lot to make a massively profitable movie look like it lost money. A small independent film might not have the resources to commit fraud on such a scale as the Hollywood guys do.

          It's like Wall Street, the small player lacks the ability to rob people nearly as efficiently as the big players do.

          Remember, this movie might not be a "major blockbuster", so there might not have been as much money allocated to the "hide the money" campaign.

      • by jythie ( 914043 )
        Yeah, but the 'standing' argument only really works when the judge wants to dismiss a case. Standing is a really nebulous concept, and just like playing the Commerce Clause game, it can be as narrow or wide as the official using it wants it to be.
      • by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @01:16PM (#48660761) Homepage

        He'll be granted standing.
        Which is really grating, as we as citizens don't have standing to sue the Federal spies for illegal activities because, as the court said, we don't have standing because we can't prove we were spied on.
        Snowden's revelations give us that standing, as he's proven that they are spying on ALL of us. But try to argue that in front of a Fox-News-watching judge who thinks ISIS is running up his street, any second now.
        But they'll have no problem entertaining this suit. Because it's not about justice, it's about power. They have it all, and we have none. That's what total surveillance means. They know what we're doing, and we aren't allowed - AT ALL - to know what they're doing.
        Wait until someone who has an axe to grind starts using the Security State API.
        And it's not just about the US. We've exported surveillance tech and surveillance laws all over the world. Now we have hundreds of would-be ultimate tyrannies about to be born.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:34AM (#48659397)

      Assuming he thought this through, does that mean the US law is against the people knowing what their government is doing?

      The government is using mass surveillance and torture, and I've seen every talking head on the subjects try to weasel out by saying "it's just metadata" or "they're just terrorists." As far as the law is concerned, it's written by weasels of the weasliest kind.
      Yes, the US government is committing acts of pure evil. Yes, they don't want us to know. What do you want to do about it?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The only thing you can do. Vote third-party.
        • That's just masturbating, pardon my Latin.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I'd love to force the government to obey the law/constitution, but as an ordinary citizen (not someone with deep pockets/connections with powerful leaders) against a corporate government that rewrites the law for its own interests , what can I realistically do? Not just symbolic acts like voting, but ways that will actually affect change while still allowing me to work my 9-5 and take care of my family.

        • You cannot. Voting won't help. Working for change won't help.

          Honestly, unless you're a multibillionaire with the power to actually affect change, about the best thing you can do is take your life's savings & go live in another country as a rich ex-pat. That way, you are at least further away from the long arm of the (un)law.

          • by laird ( 2705 )

            Revealing illegal government activity, on the other hand, appears to be relatively effective at triggering some change. Far more than reporting the illegal government to the employer and to the government, both of which Snowden did first, with no result at all.

            If the government doesn't want people to "blow the whistle" publicly for their illegal activities, they might want to either consider not engaging in illegal activities, or responding to the notifications made through proper channels, so that people a

            • How do you know anything has changed?

              The CIA refused to give access to over 9000 pages to the torture commission.

              They're still hiding a LOT.

      • Metadata is data.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For folks who are interested, Cryptome has posted the filing: Case 2:14-cv-02631-JAR-TJJ [cryptome.org].

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I'm going to go with "No, and Yes".

      Unfortunately, US law is absurdly unfavorable to we 'the people' knowing what is actually done in our name (it's difficult enough that there's so damn much of it; but it's also deliberately obfuscated and/or hidden in assorted vital areas).

      However, this guy just oozes crackpot. Nobody with a rather histrionic CV? Check. Legalbabble slurry of novel legal theories designed to dodge basic problems like "standing" and "even if Snowden is totally screwed, it's not obvious
    • Assuming he thought this through, does that mean the US law is against the people knowing what their government is doing?

      When I worked for the DoD, we were cautioned to not read newspaper pieces describing what Snowden revealed, because it violated the terms of our security clearances.

      • Did they actual show you how it violated those terms, or was it just a vague threat?

        • by DoofusOfDeath ( 636671 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @12:50PM (#48660549)

          Did they actual show you how it violated those terms, or was it just a vague threat?

          It was a vague threat, but the DoD can pull a security clearance for various reasons, which means sudden unemployment for the worker. So having ones clearance threatened is akin to be threatened with firing. Except it's a kind of firing that means you can't easily work anywhere else in that "industry" either. So it's a pretty attention-grabbing threat.

          But it also shows the absurdity of the DoD leadership. They were specifically saying that people with clearances couldn't see info that everyone else on the planet could see. This kind of insanity was a major factor in me leaving the DoD. The movie "Catch 22" makes a lot more sense after you've worked with those people.

      • by Teancum ( 67324 )

        I know this happened, but it really makes no sense to me either. If the information is already in the public domain available to ordinary citizens and even enemies of the country, what is the point of further restrictions from that information? Are they deliberately trying to disable the intelligence community from being able to do their job by not giving them enough information?

        I can understand perhaps for law enforcement purposes, if you were one of those officers involved with investigating Snowden or

        • If you can explain the logic why this order went out, I would love to understand it.

          I can't explain it. Such apparent idiocy was a major factor in me leaving the DoD.

        • There is some logic here, but it's tricky and thin.

          If information is released publicly, there's still reasons to keep it classified. Once it's unclassified, anybody with a FOIA request can verify it, but if it's still classified there's at least some plausible deniability. The government can claim that some of the documents don't really mean what they say, or were faked, or whatever. It may not apply in any particular situation, but somebody has to make that determination, and until formally declassif

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:23AM (#48659339)

    There must be something worth seeing in there.

  • Cartooney. (Score:4, Informative)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:27AM (#48659349)

    Yet another self-obsessed legal "expurt" suing over a ham sandwich"

    Horace Edwards, who identifies himself as a retired naval officer and the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has filed a lawsuit in Kansas federal court that seeks a constructive trust over monies derived from the distribution of Citizenfour. .

    Court: Does he have standing
    Court looks
    He hasn't been damaged, You must have some sort of injury, financial or physical, or whatever, to have any standing in a tort.
    Court: Come back when you have standing, now go away and stop wasting our time.

    The only "person" who can bring an action that has any weight behind it is the US Government, or some other person who has been directly harmed. That would be under the purview of the Justice Department or one of the armed services or someone who has suffered some loss that must be made whole.

    Granted that I have a "GED in Law," but that's my best bet as to what's going to happen.

    --
    BMO

    • Re:Cartooney. (Score:5, Informative)

      by flopsquad ( 3518045 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:50AM (#48659777)
      Correct (IAAL*). He has suffered no legally cognizable injury or adverse effect (nor even a plausible connection to harm). So no standing.

      Also, there is no legal theory under which he has a cause of action. In order for there to have been a tort, the defendants must have owed this guy a duty, then breached that duty, and that breach must've been the factual and proximate cause of actual harm. But Joe Random USA was an unknown, unforeseeable, causally unconnected nonparty who suffered no harm. Snowden et al owed him no duty, certainly not a fiduciary one.** So no tort.

      What about his quasicontract theory of unjust enrichment? Maybe he's taking the term too literally. It's not simply that someone was enriched and you find it unjust. It's that you had a real or implied contract with the other party and they benefitted to your detriment. Did this guy half finish building Snowden a deck and then not get paid? No? Then he can't sue for unjust enrichment. Similarly, he couldn't, as a random citizen, sue on my behalf if I was the one who built the deck for Snowden. Nor could he sue North Korea for "unjustly enriching" themselves at Sony's expense.

      *I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice.

      **Snowden may have owed the US govt a fiduciary duty, or duty of confidentiality or loyalty. But despite this guy being a retired naval officer, he is not the US govt.
      • by putzin ( 99318 )

        Maybe you can provide some clarification here. I read the article as this dude is suing the movie (producers, studio, distributors, et al), and not Snowden directly. I think this makes it even less likely he has standing. If he does, then it seems anyone can sue any movie studio, publisher, or entertainment type service claiming that the money they are making is unjust for reason X and they need to take all their profits and stuff them into a trust for Y. Then the trust for Y either goes back to the governm

        • I went back and skimmed the complaint and... a few things. One, the whole thing is (predictably) batshit crazy. Legit verbiage in what look like the right places, but saying "on information and belief" before "Nixon put space monkeys in my timecube" doesn't somehow make it uncrazy.

          Two, turns out Snowden is a named defendant, and he is in big trouble for enriching himself with all this Russian hospitality.

          Three, you're correct--this constructive trust idea (along with everything else in the complaint
    • "Standing" has been dramatically changed in US law. It now allows people to claim they could be potentially harmed, or could be harmed, or could have been harmed, to make a lawsuit.
    • The harm being, they were outed performing illegal activities. Not to mention insanely immoral.

  • Wrong target ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:27AM (#48659351) Homepage

    those being taken to court are those who have committed crimes that have been exposed by Edward Snowden; ie members of the NSA, high ranking officials in the USA government, ... These are the very people who will not be prosecuted, they have many friends in high places who will keep then free. Many of these friends want to protect them so that they, in turn, will be protected when their crimes become noticed.

  • Snowden movie... making news around Christmas time... This isn't a sequel to The Adventures of Snowden (1997) [amazon.com], is it?

  • by Aethedor ( 973725 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:30AM (#48659365)

    responsible for "obligations owed to the American people"

    If that's his charge, I say let the American people speak out a verdict instead of a jury or judge.

    • Didn't you get the memo, citizen? "the American People" (Like "The Troops") aren't something you actually listen to in order to represent the will of. Rather, they are an additional decoration to be wrapped around the will of some asshole who allegedly understands them better than they understand themselves, typically in a manner (coincidentially, of course) highly convenient to their own interests.

      It's basically the American version of 'dictatorship of the proletariat'(where you had a dictatorship that
  • I wonder if the judge will be able utter the phrase "dismissed with prejudice" while laughing his robe off.

  • So why isn't a torrent of Citizenfour soumewhere on the net? There isn't even a terrible shakey-cam recording anywhere on the net. This is very unusual.

    • I think the movie is only in the phase where they leak the names of the main characters, or perhaps some teasers from the script.

  • Kind of a SLAPP (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:45AM (#48659431)

    This reminds me of a SLAPP [wikipedia.org] ("Strategic lawsuit against public participation").

    Want to be a whistle-blower? You'll lose your job, possibly go to jail (or wind up in exile), and now face being sued for "fiduciary responsibilities".

    It's easy to imagine this is just one guy working on his own, but it doesn't require a large tinfoil hat to imagine that he's getting help from high places.

  • by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @09:56AM (#48659467)

    Sorry, random dipshit, but you have no legal standing [wikipedia.org] to sue. Case dismissed.

  • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:12AM (#48659559) Journal

    Aside from the question of standing, Snowden probably would have taken this oath before taking the NSA secrecy oath:

    I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

    His prior oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, takes precedence in my mind.

    • by IMightB ( 533307 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @11:00AM (#48659825) Journal

      Sounds to me likw he is upholding that oath and proctecting the Constitution against domestic enemies.

      • And forgetting this critical law too:

        "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

        It sort of is flat out a part of protecting the constitution to actually give a damn about what these words mean, and to understand that actions like this agent seems to be doing is making a law to abridge freedom of speech. Snowden is in breach of contract for spreading information he was privy to, but the information he revealed and is already in the public domain is something you can't re-classify and make private again. That is precisely what this guy is trying to do.

    • Aside from the question of standing, Snowden probably would have taken this oath before taking the NSA secrecy oath:

      I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

      His prior oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, takes precedence in my mind.

      The problem for him is his definition of all enemies, foreign and domestic could be very different than a court's. An interesting defense but if you guessed wrong the consequences will be severe.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:43AM (#48659735)

    Say, when there's a class action lawsuit, one can opt out and not participate, as far as I know.

    Would it be possible to "opt out" of this one? I think it would be quite the statement if suddenly a sizable portion of the US population stood up and said that they certainly do NOT want to sue Snowden et al. But reserve the right to join a countersuit...

  • by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @11:32AM (#48659955) Homepage

    He has no standing. This is not a book written by Snowden so there is no "preapproval" requirement. The movie is a journalistic documentary. Is same complainant also suing WaPo, NYT, LAT, etc for releasing the same information and being paid?

    I wonder, is he suing over the "We shot Bin Laden" movie? All of that was also classified.

    • No, no. Standing is granted -- if the government hates the target. This is what corruption means. Ask anyone living in Italy. Helplessness becomes ingrained in the culture. The bad guys always win, while wearing powdered judicial wigs and spouting serious-sounding horseshit that boils down to, "Fuck you. We own you."

  • The number of ex-Bush employees that have violated their fiduciary duty of loyalty is just shocking.

    We can start with the fascist pig that thought a water boarding wasn't torture, and move on to Cheney, who when questioned about torture ignores our own actions and instead discusses the the crimes of our opponents - as if the ends justifies the means.

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      I'll be happy to match your ex-Bush list one for one with someone from the Clinton or Obama groups. Don't pretend it's a one party issue.

      • You are correct. The problem is with the lunatic that thought this was worth suing over, as many, many people belonging to both parties have repeatedly violated the false legal theory he is trying to use to sue.
  • Meanwhile... (Score:3, Informative)

    by js096467 ( 3960353 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @11:56AM (#48660107)
    Chelsea (Bradley) Manning is still serving her 35 year sentence in a military prison.
  • Instead of having the CIA/NSA/State Department file charges, they find someone to file charges on behalf of the American public. It would seem that these agencies have the duty of protecting the public and would be expected to file a lawsuit if justified. But then members of the agencies could be called in cross examination to testify as to the exact nature of the harm done. And that's the sort of thing TLAs hate to do on the record.

    So, call up a buddy. Have him file suit. But he can't "spill the beans" on

  • "I wish to sue Thomas Paine for the damage he has done to the British people." -- Horace Edwards, if he'd lived in the 1770s.

    Can you name the brilliant invention, that was made to solve the problem of people like Horace Edwards? It was called America! Fuck yeah!

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