No Stupid Questions

Hah. Yes.

An NDA doesn't actually stop people from disclosing things. For example, most things get disclosed to spouses et cetera.

Rather, an NDA makes you responsible for losses caused by any disclosure.

Suppose person A has a legal dispute with their employer company B. B agrees to pay A $x provided theres no further action and that they sign an NDA. A agrees, provided that B also agrees not to disparage A. Everyone signs.

"A" still needs to prep a tax return so they probably need to tell their accountant. An NDA isn't going to stop them.

"B" cant really control what its employees are doing. The official narrative will comply with the agreement but everyone will talk about what happened to friends partners and peers.

Way to get out of it? Lawyers

Why are people afraid? Lawyers

Lawyers can get very expensive, and don't have a guaranteed result. Also a company Vs an individual usually has disproportionate funds for legal fees

It would depend on the working of the NDA.

Just a casual reminder that NDA cover lawful activity. If you have a NDA and something illegal happens within the scope of the NDA it will not protect you from the law. Also, they do not block you from reporting illegal stuff.

NDAs are very state-specific, and need specific language about length and scope, and a good lawyer can usually pick them apart in court. But that's expensive, so it's better to not be in that position in the first place.

It’s meant to be scary. I really think a lot of ndas are abused exactly because they are scary. The problem is they are expensive and uncertain.

Their validity is by state and enforcement is through the courts. Is a specific nda enforceable in your state? Is the other party likely to enforce it legally? Can you afford to defend yourself?

Don’t get me wrong,there are also many legit and enforceable ndas, which makes things complicated

All NDAs and all states (in both US and international meaning) are different so you will need a lawyer to tell what you can and can not do. Lawyers are expensive so you'll have to be really keen on breaking the NDA to even figure out the consequences of doing so.

It is never a good idea to put yourself in a position where you have legal liability and could be sued. Damages and even just the cost of hiring a lawyer could bankrupt you.

Need to know what country and state. Generally reporting a crime to the police is protected by the common law defence of necessity.

So, you signed a legally-binding Non-Disclosure Agreement and now you wish to disclose something in it?

You might think you can do it anonymously, but they may have a way of tracing the leak back to you. One thing Apple does and has done is put people on bogus projects that will never see light of day. Report on the Apple game system, the Apple scale, and the Apple running shoes, they can narrow that leak down to you, or you and a couple other people, and drop you (since you weren't doing anything for them anyway). Stupid examples but you get the point.

There's also the canary system, a spy/counterspy method mentioned by Tom Clancy in his Jack Ryan books. I don't know if it's real, or if the CIA, Mossad, KGB, or any other intelligence agency actually uses it. The idea is, you tell three friends the same secret, but you change up the details each time and you keep track of who was told what version of the lie. When the lie comes back to you, you know who betrayed you because of the detail only one of them got (the canary that sang).

(If canary is familiar, you may have also heard the term "warrant canary." This is a case where someone, say a VPN provider, will put a line of text on their site that says "We have never been asked to provide records on our customers." Once they get, and are forced to comply with such a request, they remove the line, and people watching it know what's up. Same concept, actually.)

So like the last person to reply said, it's not a good idea. Even if you're anonymous, you may spill something linked directly to you, and they know you leaked it and can prove it in court.

I beta tested and signed an NDA about a video game that's been out for over 10 years now. I still don't talk about the beta test. I've played the commercially released game. I don't like it. I've shared my opinion on those experiences. Only ever told my wife about the beta test. But even so, there was nothing really worth mentioning in the beta test. It was just a little more boring than the commercial version, because they added more shit to do. It's still a turd, it just now has a couple chocolate sprinkles on it. Or, it's still a pig, but now it has lipstick on it.