How the fuck is it even remotely legal for a politician to sign an NDA with a corporation to hide information from their constituents?
Can’t you issue a recall vote?
The United States is not a democracy. Power does not rest with the populous.
Electoral Democracy has four required mechanism: Ranked Voting, Lottery Option, Recall Mechanism, Randomized Districting. Neither the United States, nor any of it states, nor any of its cities or counties to my knowledge qualify as a democracy. The vast majority aren’t even on the democratic spectrum. Top to bottom, we are electoral oligarchy. When you lack democracy, you lack consent of the governed, and your governments are not legitimate. They are both inherently and demonstrably corrupt.
We must move to install these democratic mechanisms in our local governments. We must entrench democracy.
How the fuck is it even remotely legal for a politician to sign an NDA with a corporation to hide information from their constituents?
Who would prosecute, even if it was? Bet the DAs are wrapped up in this as much as anyone else.
“OK next question. Can your head fit into this basket?”
Can you have recall elections? Those are no longer your politicians, they are corporate employees.
Without punishment or consequences, it doesn’t matter. We’re cooked. Our leaders literally raped children and NOTHING has been done. We’re overcooked.
You’d think people would look at all these political jagoffs and think,“Nope, not voting for that corrupt mother fucker again. Fool me once…” But then, these fucking shit voters, the idiotic population, continues to vote for the same fucking people expecting things to change. They fucking know that reps aren’t helping them, but still vote the same. I’ll continue to vote for the better candidates, but I’ve given up hope of seeing change before I shuttle off this mortal coil.
Corruption, corruption everywhere and not a drop to drink (because the data centers sucked up all of the good drinking water).
Public officials should not be able to sign NDAs with private businesses.
We are all disenfranchised on this great day.
i for one welcome our overlords…
What stops them?
Usually morals?
🧐
It should not be legal for elected officials to sign NDAs with corporations.
That was my reaction before I even read the text at the bottom of the post.
It should not be legal for elected officials to sign NDAs
with corporations.Part of the price for being given the power of office should be the loss of privacy. If you are an official, you are no longer a private citizen. You are a representative and should not be doing anything you want to keep secret from your constituency.
I generally agree with that, but sometimes government officials have to perform official duties that require confidentiality.
If they’re intervening on behalf of a constituent and it involves medical or otherwise personal information, then they should be required to maintain confidentiality. Whether that requires an NDA or something else is a different question.
No NDA necessary. That’d be under other laws/systems. Some would be under things like HIPAA in the US if they learned the information in the course of their work. At minimum, it would fall under civil liability if they publicised private information of private individuals and those people claimed that it caused them harm in some way.
At this point I think you may not even understand what a NDA is.
Are you under the impression if someone doesn’t want to talk about a topic, they just “sign a NDA” and don’t have to talk about it?
An NDA is a contract in which someone agrees not to disclose information on a certain set of topics, under penalty defined in the contract or civil liabilities for breach of contract. “Have to talk about it” is an odd phrase for the subject. An NDA doesn’t force someone to talk/not talk about anything. It just creates a strong incentive to not talk about the topics included in the NDA or anything that might arguably fall under those topics because it opens one up to penalties. Many people can and do use NDAs as an excuse not to share information, with some even using a false implication that an NDA exists which prevents them sharing inconvenient information.
An NDA doesn’t force someone to talk/not talk about anything. It just creates a strong incentive to not talk about the topics included in the NDA or anything that might arguably fall under those topics because it opens one up to penalties. Many people can and do use NDAs as an excuse not to share information, with some even using a false implication that an NDA exists which prevents them sharing inconvenient information.
…
You…
You thought I meant an NDA was a magical spell that literally and physically prevents someone from speaking about something?
I have zero idea where you got the idea that a NDA can make someone talk about something tho, that’s even more random.
An NDA with the federal government means felonies and long sentences.
But yes, someone can physically violate an NDA, it’s not fucking magic.
Thanks for angrily strawmanning what I wrote. It tells me I can just drop this thread. Toodles.
but sometimes government officials have to perform official duties that require confidentiality.
If by “sometimes” you mean “they’ll make you sign a NDA to tell you 8 hours before everyone else it’s Taco Tuesday”…
Yeah, that’s pretty close
NDAs aren’t rare at all, and I wish it was surprising no one on Lemmy seems to have actual governmental experience.
NDAs aren’t rare at all, and I wish it was surprising no one on Lemmy seems to have actual governmental experience.
Hey jackass, I had to sign an NDA when I left my government job because I held a security clearance. I know more about it than you do.
Trite quips about taco tuesday aside, government jobs require confidentiality about some things, and transparency about others. There’s no contradiction there, but ideally it should be unambiguous where the boundary is. Those things should be clearly defined.
A good start, albeit still overly simplistic, would be to say confidentiality concerning information belonging to their constituents, and transparency concerning information belonging to corporations and their donors. Unfortunately that still leaves a lot of vaguery and wiggle-room.
But I’m no policy-maker, so even if I were to write a twenty-page document defining everything in minute detail, it still wouldn’t matter.
Except for personal stuff. But any action that will impact anyone outside of their family should be public.
Nope. All of it. It should be unappetizing to take power over others. If someone wants to have authority to afflict thousands if not millions of people with their existence, they don’t get to have any space to hide their crimes. If they don’t want to make that sacrifice to keep us safe, they can just stay home. No one is forcing them to seek public office.
I’d argue that medical records and maybe travel info should also be open. Though travel info should be on a delay of say 2 months.
I’d argue relevant medical records. I don’t need to know if an elected official has diabetes or is on PrEP, but I do need to know if they’re off their mental health medication, if they’re experiencing dementia, or if they’re dead/dying.
Personally, I’d be very against medical records. Some folks have diseases and disorders which are grossly misunderstood by the public at large, and even civil servants deserve to return to a normal life after they leave office.
PSA most NDAs are unenforceable BS. Same with non-competes. You can’t prevent a person from making a living. The only thing NDAs can really cover are true trade secrets that could cause actual damages to the company. Otherwise in the US a company can’t make you sign your right to free speech away.
And as an elected official, you should not be able to sign away your constituents’ ability to have a transparent government.
PSA most NDAs are unenforceable BS.
They expose you to vexation litigation within the same public bureaucracy that these companies are buying up.
If you want to see what a private industry can do to fuck over an attorney with a spine and a bit of skill, just check out the history of Steven Donzinger.
The only thing NDAs can really cover are true trade secrets that could cause actual damages to the company.
Isn’t it very easy for companies to argue any confidential information/agreement would damage them?
It has to be a specific trade secret AND cause actual damages.
If you leaked the secret recipe to coca cola and now competitors don’t just make cokealikes, but literal coke for half the price, you get nuked from orbit.
If I help a company develop machine learning I can talk about my implementation, the problems I solved, how I did it, what design decisions I made .etc because all of that is reasonable to an experienced software engineer. If I had some novel idea nobody else had that company would have patented it, or specifically named it as a trade secret and not just “it’s all a trade secret plz don’t talk or we SLAPP you with a dumb lawsuit”
They’re up against the constitution’s 1st amendment in the US. In my home country of Canada we have the same or stronger protections for workers. My second example literally happened to me. I was on a ML project and signed an NDA and the only thing that NDA and a non-compete and all that really covers is me giving info to competitors while I worked there basically… Once I no longer work for them it’s an uphill battle to even prove the basis of a lawsuit to go after me for the NDA or NC.
If you can’t afford the time or money to defend yourself from a SLAPP lawsuit, the legality doesn’t matter much anymore. It is unfortunately in most peoples best financial interests to not personally test the legality of unenforceable BS.
Exactly, corporations care not for the legality. It’s just that the very existence of a signed NDA opens up the power to suit, countersuit or in general drown a person in so many administrative fees that they are condemned to eternal poverty anyway. Whether the actual text is legal or not is irrelevant. An NDA is a weapon in many other ways.
Yup. When the punishment is financial, rules only exist for the poor. Same as when you can’t defend yourself in court. System is rigged.
Who would arrest them? The whole system is corrupt
An ignorant and unengaged electorate is just asking for it. When you’re rich they let you do it, you can do anything.
I remind my friends all the time to pay attention. I plead with them to vote, but they just don’t care. They think everyone is corrupt and nothing matters. I’m the only one in my friends group that gives a damn. Honestly, I think this country is cooked. I don’t see any way other than pain to cure this apathy.
That’s tragic. I’m appealing to people who believe far-right conspiracies (without realising the source is far-right) to be careful of what they consume, but they’re voting.
A ton are corrupt sure but of course it doesn’t matter if people choose to do nothing.
People take their innate power and just throw it in the trash. It’s disappointing.
Grab em by the
pussycomplete and utter lack of morality.
The cop who is gonna end up living next door to a gas turbine powered data center?
Thought he just shoot his anger at minorities?
Michigan Constitution Art. 4 § 11 protects state legislators from liability for speech in the legislature. A similar clause that applies to local councillors would prevent these sorts of contracts because they wouldn’t be binding; the councillors could openly violate the non-disclosure agreement during the council sessions and would be immune from liability for breaching the agreement. That being said, being legally allowed to speak won’t persuade a person who doesn’t want to speak from staying silent. If the company in question offered a huge bribe to not talk, that’s not something that can be solved by the legislature. That’s a problem for the prosecutor’s office.
And who is going to stand up to them and enforce the law?
So they’re less worried about civil liability and more concerned about being sued for “breach of contract” and possibly having to return the bribe?
Contract law is a branch of the civil law and breach of contract gives rise to civil liability.
Let’s talk about legal bribes vs illegal bribes.
A “legal bribe” would be something like offering some crazy incentive to a councillor that is tied to the project being approved, like saying “We’re thinking about donating $100,000 to your re-election campaign” or “Your son should apply for our data analyst position with an annual salary of $100,000”. There is no explicit agreement, just a wink and a nod. But the person being bribed knows that the receipt of the reward is contingent on their acting according to the bribe offerer’s wishes. This form of bribery is legal in the United States and actually constitutionally protected according to the infamously fucked-up Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. If the councillor doesn’t do what the data centre company wants, they’ll simply not receive the donation or their son won’t get the job.
An “illegal bribe” is just a classic bribe: an agreement that we will pay you X dollars cash if you do Y. That’s illegal in the US and carries strict penalties. But since it’s illegal, if the money has already been paid and the bribe recipient doesn’t do what was agreed, or the bribe offerer doesn’t pay after the bribe recipient does what they’re told, there is absolutely no recourse to the legal system because courts will not enforce contracts for illegal activities.
The NDA is probably a legal bribe. The company invites the councillor to discuss the data centre project at the fanciest restaurant in town, makes them sign an NDA that “all details of the meeting will remain confidential”, then discusses the possibility of the campaign donation or nepo job offer at the meeting. Then the company pays for the meal on the company card. All of that is technically legal, but of course, it’s horribly corrupt so if the locals caught wind of it, they’d run the councillor out of town. Entire municipal councils have been recalled from office before as a result of unpopular data centre projects.
How insightful. Glad you shared these comments.
Breach of contract is a civil action.
Peak corruption
I think non-disclosure agreements and the existence of billionaires are mutually dependent.
I have worked with small businesses worth peanuts that use NDAs for meetings with third parties, they are a very common and easy to use tool
And so, under the guise of protecting trade secrets, companies conveniently shield themselves from the disclosure of all kinds of misconduct.
There are whistleblower protections for reporting such things, even if under NDA
That’s funny. You’re funny.
Yes, but that doesn’t stop the lawsuit from starting. It may be a way to dismiss the suit after the fact, but you’ve already had to pay for a lawyer. And that’s the entire point. Even if you’re legally in the right, you’ll still get taken for a ride just to prove that right.
Yes, in theory. However, under the U.S. legal system, very few people will risk being sued for an alleged breach of an NDA, since it involves a civil lawsuit that can result in astronomical legal costs—potentially even if you were to win the case.
So, in most cases, the mere threat of financial ruin—which can very easily result from the exorbitant legal fees—is enough.
Which is an entirely different issue that has nothing to do with NDAs in general. NDAs in the US are pretty much useless either way, since corps will sue you to hell and back if you say anything they consider a “secret”, no matter how arbitrary it is or what documents you signed.
Well, if that were the case, companies wouldn’t insist on NDAs, would they?
I also don’t quite understand how you came to the conclusion that NDAs have nothing to do with the fact that any kind of legal dispute in the U.S. costs a lot of money.
Just to be clear: I am fully aware that NDAs can certainly serve a legitimate purpose when it comes to protecting trade secrets, which can of course be necessary and sensible. In practice, however, they are unfortunately all too often used to hide illegitimate activities from the public, as this post here demonstrates quite impressively. It is simply absurd that elected officials can sign an NDA and then, citing it, withhold information from the public about an obvious conflict of interest.
Have they signed NDAs?
several governors already okayed the project in thier states
What a shithole country
A similar “meeting with the public” had place in the small municipality where I live, in Italy. Similar in the sense that the mayor and members of her technical department refused to answer most questions, or took to mock the audience.
