Obama summons tech CEOs to White House for another NSA discussion
President Obama will meet with the chief executives of several major tech companies later today. Politico reports that the discussion will revolve around privacy and intelligence gathering — much like the first private roundtable Obama coordinated with Silicon Valley's leaders
in December. In that instance, the meeting was originally supposed to
focus on HealthCare.gov, but subsequent reports claimed that Obama's
guests quickly steered the conversation to the NSA and government
surveillance. This time it appears the President plans to tackle the
delicate subject head on. The complete guest list hasn't yet been
revealed by the White House, but it seems today's huddle may have been
hastily arranged. It was only added to Obama's public calendar last
night, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is reportedly unable to attend due to
the short notice executives were given about the discussion.
But Politico says one vocal critic of the government's policies will be in attendance: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this month, Zuckerberg assailed the Obama administration
for its continued lack of adequate transparency on all matters of
surveillance and data collection. Zuckerberg said he has spoken with
Obama personally to vent his "frustration over the damage the government
is creating for all of our future." That very public critique may have
prompted the White House to arrange today's meeting in short order. Eric
Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, will also reportedly have a seat
at the table.
Update: The full guest
list for Obama's tech-oriented meeting today includes Zuckerberg,
Schmidt, Netflix's Reed Hastings, Dropbox founder/CEO Drew Houston, Alex
Karp of Palantir, and Aaron Levie of Box.
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