Tim Cook and other tech executives will meet with President Obama tomorrow to discuss the Healthcare.gov website, as well as "national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures". In addition, the group will discuss ways the Obama administration can partner with the tech sector to grow the economy and create new jobs.
According to a report from Time:
“Tomorrow, President Obama will meet with executives from leading tech companies to discuss progress made in addressing performance and capacity issues with HealthCare.Gov and how government can better deliver IT to maximize innovation, efficiency and customer service,” a White House official said. “The meeting will also address national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. Finally, the President will discuss ways his Administration can partner with the tech sector to further grow the economy, create jobs and address issues around income inequality and social mobility.”
According to the report, the following executives will attend:
- Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
- Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
- Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy
- Reed Hastings, Co-Founder & CEO, Netflix
- Drew Houston, Founder & CEO, Dropbox
- Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo!
- Burke Norton, Chief Legal Officer, Salesforce
- Mark Pincus, Founder, Chief Product Officer & Chairman, Zynga
- Shervin Pishevar, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sherpa Global
- Brian Roberts, Chairman & CEO, Comcast
- Erika Rottenberg, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, LinkedIn
- Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
- Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google
- Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Microsoft
- Randall Stephenson, Chairman & CEO, AT&T
Earlier this month, Apple, Google and a number of other tech companies urged the President and Congress to reform government surveillance tactics.
Concerns about government use of user data collecting ramped up in June, when a U.S. government program named PRISM was revealed to be giving the U.S. National Security Agency direct access to user data on corporate servers across a wide spectrum of Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.
In response, Apple published a statement of "Commitment to Customer Privacy" denying its participation in the NSA's program and teamed up with a number of tech companies to request greater NSA surveillance transparency, allowing it to provide customers with regular reports on security related requests. Last month, Apple published a report outlining statistics on government and law enforcement requests it received from January to the end of June.
Apple and other companies also met with President Obama in August to discuss privacy issues and government surveillance. Recently, Apple and 30 other technology corporations signed a letter urging the U.S. Congress to pass the Surveillance Order Reporting Act of 2013 and the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013, which would result in increased surveillance disclosures and would give technology companies the right to publish detailed statistics on demands for user data.
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