Obama to face Apple CEO Tim Cook, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, other tech execs pressing for NSA limits

“President Barack Obama today will face a group of executives including Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook and Yahoo! Inc.’s Marissa Mayer whose companies are pushing the U.S. to curb broad government spying on communications,” Margaret Talev reports for Bloomberg.

“The executives intend to press Obama to act on the changes to surveillance policies proposed in a letter sent to the president and lawmakers last week, according to a representative of one of the companies, who asked not to be identified because the meeting plans aren’t public,” Talev reports. “Apple and Yahoo were among the companies that signed the letter, which said the U.S. should take the lead in changing government surveillance practices after revelations that the National Security Agency gained access to phone and Internet data networks to conduct spying. The companies asked in the letter that the U.S. ‘ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight.'”

MacDailyNews Note: The list of attendees:

• 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

“The White House initially sought out the executives to discuss progress in fixing the health-care website and government information-technology stumbles, according to a person familiar with the invitation, who asked for anonymity to discuss private communications,” Talev reports. “The company leaders didn’t agree to the meeting, which was arranged in the past few days, until the White House included the NSA surveillance on the agenda, the person said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: In contrast to the portion of this meeting that we consider to be merely a dog and pony show (initial reports mentioned the meeting was only about the Obamacare website fiasco), anything moves the ball even a little bit towards adhering to the rights granted under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a good thing. (Plus, after not being mentioned in earlier reports, it’s nice to see that Marissa is attending, too.)

MacDailyNews Note: UPDATE 1:01pm EST: Added photo of Marissa Mayer as per numerous requests.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]

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