Washington Post on illegal NDAs
Excerpt:
"Nondisclosure agreements traditionally have been used to prevent employees from going to competitors and taking trade secrets with them. But lawyers for whistleblowers say they are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of potentially illegal agreements employees are being asked to sign since the Dodd-Frank law went into effect.
“Corporate America is becoming far more sophisticated and aggressive in its efforts to discourage people from coming forward and reporting externally,” said Jordan A. Thomas, who helped to establish the SEC’s whistleblower office as an assistant director there and now works for a New York law firm, Labaton Sucharow. One of his clients is the hedge-fund whistleblower.
Thomas said he has other clients who work for Wall Street firms that are under investigation by the SEC and were asked to sign overly restrictive nondisclosure agreements that prohibit or discourage them from cooperating with federal investigators."