To move aggressively to reform the National Security Agency’s (NSA) controversial surveillance operations, the US called the top leaders from the world’s biggest technology companies after having a discussion with the President of the United States of America “Obama”, last week, White House to resist the attempt so that they portray the encounter as covering a range of broader priorities.
In the meeting called in the US, Executives from 15 companies attended. They had a face-to-face discussion with Obama and Joe Biden, the Vice President, in which they expressed their views about the NSA’s wide-ranging surveillance activities, which had achieved the trust of their users. The companies included in the meeting are Google, Apple, Yahoo and Twitter.
NSA is a collection of Americans’ phone records in bulk quantity, which is almost Orwellian” in scope and probably a violation of the US Constitution. The federal judge released this rule, and the meeting was conducted a day after the law was passed. White House represent some technical companies which have already expressed their deep concern at the wide-ranging nature of NSA surveillance and the way it apparently draws information from their systems without their knowledge.
The troubled federal healthcare website issues were also discussed in the meeting, as they are included in the agenda. However, it is seen that technical companies have not addressed healthcare websites. They are happy they got the opportunity to share their views or principles on government surveillance in front of the President, which they released last week, and they urge him to move aggressively on reform. After leaving the White House, all the company executives said this in a joint statement.
According to the two executives, the White House event was a series of meetings, and the session duration was 2 Hrs and 45 Min. During the time, the healthcare website issues were discussed for a maximum of 45 minutes in the absence of the President and vice president.
Healthcare website and government IT issues discussions were restricted to a pre-meeting with Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and other advisors. After the conclusion of this discussion, the President and Vice President arrived for the primary debate, which was scheduled and focused on surveillance issues.
Obama has announced the appointment of an executive in Microsoft, which helped improve the healthcare website. Still, according to one executive, NSA surveillance reform was their main topic of discussion.
In the meeting, discussions were raised on various topics such as Prism, an NSA program that collects and mines internet communications, bulk collection of telephone records, reform of the secret FISA courts, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. This act is 27 years old and allows emails and digital communications older than six months to be seized without a warrant.
The executives who were present at the meeting included Obama, President of the United States of America and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple; Randall Stephenson, the chairman and CEO of AT&T; Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo; and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google and senior representatives from Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Netflix were also there.
The discussions are also made concerning the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. After listening to the group’s views and recommendations, the President has clarified that he will consider the input and output of other outside stakeholders.
Due to the NSA revelations, technical executives were still feeling the aftershocks of it, and smaller companies were also at a competitive disadvantage. No. Of cuties present at the meeting who don’t consider the Affordable Care Act a severe problem.
Obama administration is now dealing with several issues relating to NASA. The President and his advisers considered recommendations of an NSA review panel set up in the wake of Snowden’s revelations.
A question arises on the constitutionality of the NSA’s program, and it can be resolved by only the Supreme Court.
