Non-disclosure agreements and ‘gag-orders’ should be prohibited from being used to keep any individual or entity quite about the contents unless there is a court justified reason to keep such information private. Examples of valid reasons could be to keep trade secrets secret, to keep legitimate national security information or criminal investigations secret, to ensure the physical protection of any legitimate person, to keep personal information private (bank account numbers, etc.), etc.). However, such agreements should never be used to hide any criminal or illegal behavior on the part of any party. It should be illegal for such agreements to be used to prevent one party from disclosing the fact that another party either agreed or did not agree to certain facts or payments regarding the case and settlement.

These non-disclosure agreements are a fundamental violation of the concept of free speech.  Exceptions should be made, of course, but these types of agreements are used far too often to hide behavior which should be made public.