You can’t be forced to sign away your rights, but you can make an agreement to enter into an arrangement with confidential information with another party and agree to penalties if the contract is broken.

Making anyone free to reveal anything without consequences even after entering into an agreement about it isn’t going to work. You’re probably thinking only about the narrow case where a company is wrong and the employee is whistleblowing, but that is protected when done through the right channels.

However this wasn’t really whistleblowing. This was someone trying to make profit on her own book and sell more copies by sharing info she agreed not to.

Whether or not the whistleblower makes a profit is kind of irrelevant though.