• xmunk
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    6 months ago

    I think the NDA could restrict you from talking to law enforcement about what you had for breakfast and probably be enforceable but contracts can’t be enforced if they’d require you to commit crimes or prevent you from reporting crimes.

    • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The NDA was apparently against voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. Essentially, it was agreeing to only cooperate to the extent required by law.

      That’s still bad, but wouldn’t overtly compel someone to commit a crime. It’s just heavily implying that crimes are being committed and could easily push someone to do something illegal simply to cover their own ass.

      • xmunk
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        6 months ago

        Sure, but all voluntary cooperation with law enforcement would still be allowed under that NDA. The NDA itself might be legal to ask someone to sign, but you can never restrict someone’s right to report criminal activity (you’re also never punished for choosing not to report criminal activity, but the right to report is inalienable).

        Legal agreements frequently include unenforceable bullshit. For instance a contract may include a phrase like “Either party may consult a lawyer if they surrender 300$ to the other party” you can put that in a contract and someone might pay you 300$… but the ability to consult a lawyer is inalienable so you could also consult a lawyer and refuse to pay the 300$ and they’d have no recourse to force payment.

        The TL;DR is that we let bad faith lawyers get away with writing extremely unfair contracts that pressure people to do something without actually having the backing of the law. If people challenge it they’ll win - but we’ve gotten really lax and don’t actually punish the contract authors so a lot of folks just write bullshit into contracts that’d never hold up in court in the hope that people just blindly obey it.

        And the TL;DR TL;DR (yes, I do in fact have ADHD, how could you tell) is…

        Always talk to a fucking lawyer.