Zelensky Compound NDA
writing.kemitchell.com
writing.kemitchell.com
Nobody thinks a document protects a president from a spy or assasin directly. Obviously a spy will sign an nda without blinking.
But the document and the ceremony around it absolutely does produce a real world effect on everyone else, and one that matters, both in explicitly defining things that you absolutely can not leave up to most people's simple judgement, and in getting them to classify what this document says differently than the 5 different terms of service they probably agreed to that week.
Enforcement is almost the dumbest aspect to even talk about. The threat of enforcement (in this case) is a token. But that does not make the formality a token.
And even the threat of enforcement is more than a token for most of the people involved, since they are all local. It's only a token for the exception case of a visitor.
The story mentions specific items of secrecy. But most NDA forms provided by lawyers speak only in broad generalizations about what information must be kept confidential. The best terms would be tailored to the specific situation. But the cost of legal help is high and people’s empowerment to write for themselves is low.
https://nltimes.nl/2022/04/04/dutch-journalist-expelled-ukra...
He was asked politely first to remove the content, refused because 'it was his right', then was asked officially, still refused, then was arrested and expelled from the country after his Ukrainian press accreditation was revoked.
His employer claims that they did not know that this was forbidden, whereas war zone journalism 101 is pretty much 'don't share targeting info with the enemy'. The rocket attack that he covered has missed their intended target and within minutes he put a bunch of pictures online of where they had landed. Pretty bad episode, and ND (the newspaper he worked for) lost a ton of credibility with their positioning around this, they should have just admitted their mistake and move on, instead they focus on how the guy was treated. As far as I'm concerned he was pretty lucky, they could have easily believed he was spying for the Russians directly rather than just being monumentally stupid. I guess he couldn't wait to get his War Photo prize or something to that effect.
Given that he's a professional and supposed to know better, what he did is difficult to distinguish from spying.
He may have been responsible for helping target and kill many civilians. He was asked to stop and he didn’t. Why didn’t they politely ask again, while maybe offering a cup of tea or something? It would be nice if they would have, but like we said it’s war time there.
Exactly. It's a luxury to treat a bratty punk with kid gloves, and some people don't have that luxury.
For some foreign journalist or diplomat sure but against a local journalist, maintenance crew, cleaner, etc who all most likely sign the exact same NDA for sure Ukraine can enforce it if the person is unable to escape the country (which for males aged 18 to 65 is really hard at the moment for example)
edit: Also as a journalist if you actually do leak such information after signing a piece of paper saying you would not who would actually trust you with any kind of secret information in the future?
Much like everyone making a purchase online will 'agree to the terms and conditions' without reading them, many jobs get so many NDAs thrust at them that they'll sign without reading them.
If you repair office coffee machines for a living? You might visit 4 office buildings a day, and they'll all hand you a pile of paperwork telling you not to take photos, not to connect things to their computers, that you should evacuate if you hear the fire alarm, and so on. Hardly anybody reads such things before signing them.
If you're actually signing, with signature, a legal document without reading it, you reap what you sow. Ticking a checkbox on a site is not the same legally binding agreement that an NDA is.
It’s not? I thought it was! (Not that it should be.)
Sites that use "By using this service, you agree to X." do not hold up in court almost at all.
Sites that use "By checking this box, you agree to X." there is some semblance of a binding agreement but there's a lot of wiggle-room in court. User doesn't understand, wasn't made clear, wasn't actually the user, etc. can all be argued.
Sites where you sign your name in some way, shape or form, tend to be treated more fortified - a la Docusign, which employs an extensive set of protections against forgery and cases of misunderstanding. These cases probably couldn't be argued in court on the premise of sort of 'unintentional' agreement like the prior two could be.
This of course extends to written documents.
Unless you're signing NDAs with a checkbox (which would be kind of reckless on the issuer's part), then NDAs hold much more weight in court in most cases as there is very little ambiguity as to whether or not the signee actually meant to sign it.
Courts might as well make decisions based on income. Income and working conditions already filter out a lot of theoretical rights for the working poor before even getting a court date. And come to think of it, there are all sorts of examples where the income of plaintiffs or defendants even matter expressis verbis...
Unlike other sites I've seen linked on HN this one uses a reasonable body font size of 16px, i.e. the browser default font size. However it uses a font that at 16px renders as the equivalent of the Windows default sans-serif font at 14px.
What's worse, block quotes are rendered at a calculated 13.6px, which makes it the equivalent of the default font at a minute 11px!
I know most HN users will likely not care about this as HN comments are set to a mere 12px (making HN the only site on the web I regularly visit that I have to zoom in to at least 150% to use comfortably) but this just borders on cruelty. It's not even good from an aesthetics point of view as at a fixed width of roughly 30rem (working out to roughly 70 characters per line) the article occupies less than 1/3rd of the screen.
There's clearly some intent behind the design as it uses a non-standard font and makes other seemingly deliberate choices but every choice seemingly just compounded on making the site harder to look at.
For many years, I did set font-size. And now I can't exactly remember why I stopped. Taking a look at some browser previews across OS'es and and browsers, I do see that it's too small. I'll bump it.
Leaking this information would be enforced by court under "Leaking the state secrets".
I'm not a lawyer, but if I remember correctly, in Ukraine you can't be prosecuted for leaking the secret information unless it's clearly labeled as secret and you signed a consent to access it. If you don't sign, you are not supposed to get access.
So this is the case, where to access the secret bunker they have to know what is the secret and sign they understand the implications.
Edit: in some cases before the war it was better to not consent. This would limit access to certain data, but would also give more freedom in case you want to travel or work abroad.
Those are not the kinds of possibilities it makes any sense to consider.
No, that idea doesn't pass the smell test. They're minority party representatives, and my understanding is Cruz (at least) has a reputation for being obnoxious and selfish, even among his co-partisans. There's no reason to think those two would get some kind of special permission, and plenty of reason to think they were being careless and/or selfish.
I lived in both Ukraine and US. They barely know what "senator" even means, yet alone know their names. Most people cannot say how many major political parties there are in US, they have their own parties. I'm pretty sure even Ukrainian president doesn't really care about US internal politics, only about external.
Ukrainian people: maybe; Ukrainian president: absolutely not (and there's was a great example of how the two can intersect just a couple of years ago). An understanding of a country's internal politics is vital to understanding, predicting, and influencing its external politics.
A smart Ukranian politician would consider American sentiment since they want our help
But in this case, Cruz and Rubio shared a picture of their screens on Twitter, while on a call, revealling at the very least that Zelenskyy was on a video call at that moment in time.
And NDAs have plenty of value (oh, I can’t talk about what I’m working on? Good thing you let me know!). Yes, they can also be abusive and that is worth addressing, but they can also enable a lot of valuable things.
* in some cases, such as employment, this kind of negotiation isn’t meaningfully possible, which is where legislation is useful.
Anyway. An NDA is silly and unnecessary when you have far more powerful laws governing state secrets, treason etc. than anything under civil law.
It also provides a route to prosecute someone who might be caught sharing information they shouldn’t maliciously, but where treason etc could not be proved.
It also gives them legal cover if they need to charge someone with something.
AKA just today they announced a 'mole' high up in the civil service.
We will do everything possible to avoid repeating of the genocide, but RF is a strong opponent with a lot of resources, so we need to be smarter, see better, be better equipped, and be faster. Otherwise, they will just push us inch by inch to Western border.
My grandfather survived this and was the one who told me about the famine.
Since then I have panic attack from time to time from the idea I won't have anything to give my children when they ask for something to eat.
It's even worse now, because that's what is happening on occupied territories.
Or to people in occupied territories, whoever needs it. Life has ups and downs. Thank God I'm doing OK these days, so the only appropriate response to that prosperity is to share freely. Then if/when the tides turn, someone will be able to show the same kindness. So yes, I would like to help if you can specifically say how to do so.
Expecting current situation I and my family left Ukraine in 2012, so we currently help refugees arriving to Germany.
I doubt there is a way for Russia to win here in any meaningful way. Russia already lost too much armor without gaining anything but a land route to Crimea (which it needs to secure somehow).
Russia does not have any modern tech of its own production and population that is not a supportive as the government would like. Even now real support is not as widespread but it will only get worse with economy going south. People are cheering while they still feel safe and relatively comfortable.
I highly doubt Russia can do much without WMD here. And using WMD's will be a loss anyway.
Either this shit is over by September or we are going for the red button in August.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If the Russians are brutal enough (and continue to be brutal) and the survivors have some place to flee too, they might be able to hold on to quite a bit if they can defeat the organized military by "evaporating" away those that would challenge them.
Well, there's no need for millions of survivors in wars. Right now, Russia is keeping it's line about "Ukraine is Russia" and with that, reasonable restraint towards civilians compared to Syria, but, if that is no longer "necessary" or "reasonable" in their point of view, using nukes and leaving no survivors is a cheap, cost-reducing strategy.
I disagree with this. Mariupol, Kharkiv, etc. were bombed and shelled indiscriminately like Aleppo was.
If Russia fully mobilizes (ie, declares this a war, calls up reserves, etc) AND the west slows their support, Russia can win.
Ukraine has the people and the will to win, but without heavy weapons, ammo, the training to use western weapons and logistical support that's not enough. Right now Biden is trying to pass a $33B support bill. But Congress is playing their stupid politics and if it doesn't pass the alliance will probably fracture and Ukraine will also likely lose support from other Western nations.
Russia is currently manpower & materiel constrained. They can fix the former by fully mobilizing. The latter is harder to fix, but they have destroyed Ukraine's production. So they if Ukraine is cut off from Western arms shipments....
But even after winning Russia still has the problem of occupying Ukraine. It's not clear that's possible with flattening the country.
Very big if here. People over here are not very eager to go to the frontline. Painting Z on your car is one thing. Marching to your almost certain death is another.
>heavy weapons
I was under the impression that heave weapons are on their way already though? Old but usable T72's from Poland and some tanks\howitzers from other countries.
Surely they still need fuel, ammo and training but right now it looks like Ukraine has some time.
> occupying Ukraine.
I think the current plan is to destroy as much as possible (fuel, storages etc), cut off from support as much as possible and maybe enter Moldova.
I'm mostly just pushing back against the narrative that a Ukrainian victory is inevitable. If it's seen as inevitable, then it becomes easier to justify not delivering the help they need.
The biggest problem right now is to maintain unity across all of the countries that are on the other side of this line, Russia has a much easier job there than the West, with Hungary and Switzerland as the latest in the pack of useful idiots carrying Putin's water for him. With friends like that you don't need enemies.
It's just that the Russians blowing up Zelensky's bunker would not help them all that much, at least for now. I'd say the inverse is also true, killing Putin at this exact moment won't bring peace and a Russian surrender (whatever that might mean) immediately.
The problem is Putin being killed is not the same as Putin dropping dead. Whoever took over would have an imperative to take vengeance on whoever killed Putin, just on general principle, so it very much depends how it was done, who did it and what information was out about that.
This "hitlerification" of Putin hides a lot of facts on the ground, to the detriment of the West, which is why maybe they've dialed that discourse down a little in the last two weeks or so.
What they [Russians] might not know is all the modern exits and connections (to the metro system and elsewhere) that have been built since then, or things like supply chains for food, location and current state of the air filtration or communication systems.
BTW, since we're talking about bunkers: the US military in their what-if-shit-hits-the-fan plans has a very hard nut to crack with the Chinese air force, which brilliantly built their aircraft hangars deep inside mountains. It may not be immediately obvious, but the best way to counter an air force is to destroy the aircraft before they take off. Doesn't work if the hangar-bunker is 100% resilient to any kind of a conventional bomb that you could drop on it.
Ukraine has pretty functional courts, and during martial law it's even faster to prosecute.