this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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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.
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.
And as an elected official, you should not be able to sign away your constituents’ ability to have a transparent government.
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"
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.