Regardless, their point is that Snowden did not send the book in for approval/redaction before publishing, as would be required of any former employee of a three-letter agency writing about such things.
1. It's highly likely (you said definitely) given the person and subject that some information in the memoir is at least sensitive even if it is not classified, and there's an equally good chance there is some classified information.
2. The actual suit doesn't need the book to contain classified information, they can block it entirely based on process.
That's a good and helpful answer. It would be helpful to have substantial examples of (1).
(2) seems to be the thing that other commentators are claiming is being weaponized for soft-censorship (especially wrt Snowden not being in a position to use an internal three-letter-agency process to publish, and the fact that said three-letter-agencies would likely block publication using their internal processes).
Regarding (2) do you happen to know if there are just-the-government-following-standard-operating-proceedure and non-political examples of agencies blocking the proceeds of books/memoirs based on the process?
The example that comes to mind for me is Patraeus's memoirs - which was widely political and scandalous but still agencies did not seek to withhold profits from book sales.
Any examples of where (2) being used day-to-day as SOP?
2. Sorry, I'm not well versed in this area. I imagine Patraeus followed the rule when publishing his memoirs. Here are some links that might lead to what you're looking for:
https://www.al.com/news/2016/08/navy_seal_will_pay_68_millio...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/12/078r-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/02/these-forme...