May 26 (UPI) — The President Donald Trump administration is planning to issue a non-disclosure agreement to all federal workers banning them from sharing “confidential government information,” according to a draft notice posted to the Federal Register on Tuesday.
The proposal requests comment on the draft NDA “for use by federal agencies for both new and existing employees.”
The Office of Personnel Management said the form “is intended to document Federal employees’ acknowledgment of, and agreement to comply with, current legal obligations to safeguard non-public, confidential, or proprietary information, created or obtained through their official duties, while expressly preserving the right to make disclosures authorized by law.”
Employees would be banned from sharing “non-public, confidential, or proprietary information” or “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available and should not be disclosed under applicable law,” The Washington Post reported.
The proposal is designed to prevent employee leaks.
Before he became president, Trump used NDAs to prevent criticism, requiring them of ex-wives, contestants on The Apprentice and campaign staff. As president, he demands his staff sign them.
Federal workers are already blocked from releasing information under the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, which went into effect in 1993.
But this rule is broader and is specifically targeting leaks to the public and to news outlets.
There are laws that limit NDAs in government. The documents can’t limit a civil servant’s ability to report waste, fraud and abuse.
The NDA doesn’t include government contractors.
Esha Bhandari, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, told The Post that muzzling government workers with NDAs violates the First Amendment.
“Such broad gag orders would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability,” Bhandari said. “The government can’t shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy.”
The draft NDA will go live on the Federal Register Wednesday, and the public will have 30 days to comment.