WASHINGTON – Tech executives urged President Barack Obama Tuesday to “move aggressively” to overhaul the way the U.S. government conducts surveillance.
The push came during a private meeting with Obama at the White House, which was billed as an opportunity to brief industry leaders on the progress the administration has made solving problems with the federal online health-care exchange as well as the fallout that national security leaks have had on their companies.
Among those at the White House meeting were Apple CEO Tim Cook, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt.
A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program that collects millions of Americans’ telephone records may be unconstitutional. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the administration believes the surveillance program is constitutional.
Officials from eight companies – including AOL, Apple, Facebook and and Google – wrote an open letter to Obama and Congress last week in which they plainly stated their call to curb surveillance.
Among the reforms the group has called for is for the government to codify limitations on its ability to compel service providers to disclose user data; to bolster oversight of intelligence agencies collecting information; and to allow companies to publish the number of instances and nature of government demands for user information.
“We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform,” the executives said in a joint statement..
Schmidt opened the meeting and laid out industry officials’ concerns. Obama seemed sympathetic to the idea of allowing more disclosure of government surveillance requests by technology companies, according to a tech industry official who was briefed on the meeting. The official asked to remain anonymous because the meeting was private.
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