Monday, December 16, 2013

Obama to meet with tech execs to talk NSA, health care

President Obama is set to meet with several tech executives on Tuesday to discuss the administration's efforts to address problems with the federal online health care exchange as well as the fallout that national security leaks have had on their companies, according to the White House. Among those expected to take part in the White House meeting are Apple's CEO Tim Cook, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
The announcement of the meeting comes as a federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program that collects millions of Americans' telephone records may be unconstitutional.
The White House announced on Friday that Obama received 40 recommendations made by a special study group he tasked with reviewing the U.S. intelligence community's collection of telephone and Internet data in the aftermath of revelations made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Obama's action on the recommendations -- which he is currently weighing and expected to announce next month -- are of significant importance to companies like Google. Facebook, Apple and others who are dealing with the fallout of reports based on the Snowden's leaks that the NSA gained access to some of their users' information.
Obama is expected to talk to the tech officials specifically about the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures and how government can help the tech sector to "grow the economy, create jobs and address issues around income inequality and social mobility," according to the White House.
In addition to Cook, Mayer and Sandberg, other executives expected to attend the White House meeting include Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter; Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy ; Reed Hastings, co-Founder and CEO of Netflix; Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox; Burke Norton, chief legal officer of Salesforce; Mark Pincus, Founder and chairman of Zynga; Shervin Pishevar, co-Founder of Sherpa Global; Brian Roberts, chairman & CEO of Comcast; Erika Rottenberg, vice president, and general counsel of LinkedIn; Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel of Microsoft; and Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T.

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