Obama Meets with Tech Executives Again, Discussing NSA After Zuckerberg's Public Criticism
President Obama met for a second time with top technology industry executives on Friday, discussing concerns over the National Security Agency's surveillance programs and the possibility of reform.
Obama previously met with technology executives earlier this year, before setting out a plan of NSA reform that limited the agency's access to the metadata of U.S. citizens and set forth a process of changing where that massive trove of data resides.
Recent revelations about the NSA's spy malware program, which included details about the agency pretending to be, or "spoofing," Facebook servers, pushed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the edge of frustration -- after which he called President Obama personally and wrote a post criticizing the U.S. Government's spy agency for weakening internet security and privacy and called the government "a threat" to the internet. Invitations to the second tech meeting, which the White House characterized as a "continued dialogue" went out soon after Zuckerberg's post hit the internet.
Zuckerberg was at the White House for Friday's tech meeting with President Obama, which included Google's Eric Schmidt, Netflix's Reed Hastings, and the leaders of other major internet technology companies. According to Politico, the group met with Obama and top cabinet officials where the administration stressed its "commitment to taking steps that can give people greater confidence that their rights are being protected while preserving important tools that keep us safe," said the White House.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement after the meeting that Zuckerberg "brought his concerns about government surveillance directly to the president today," adding that the tech titans had "an honest talk about government intrusion on the internet and the toll it is taking on people's confidence in a free and open internet," according to Recode.
"While the U.S. government has taken helpful steps to reform its surveillance practices, these are simply not enough," continued the statement. "People around the globe deserve to know that their information is secure and Facebook will keep urging the U.S. government to be more transparent about its practices and more protective of civil liberties."
Zuckerberg vented his frustration very publicly over a week ago, when he wrote a Facebook post about his call to President Obama:
"I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future," said Zuckerberg's post. Zuckerberg went on to state that he'd been "so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports" of privacy and security-damaging behavior by the U.S. Government's spy agency. "When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," said Zuckerberg. "The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst."
This week at the TED 2014 conference, Google's Larry Page broke his usual reserved silence on the National Security Agency, discussing the NSA revelations with Charlie Rose. "I don't think we can have a democracy if we're having to protect you and our users from the government for stuff that we never had a conversation about," said Page.
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