Top Web company executives to meet Obama over surveillance, data privacy

Reuters said in a report that executives of several large Internet companies in the US are expected to have met President Barack Obama on Friday. Obama, said the White House, will continue his dialogue on privacy, technology and intelligence issues following his speech last January 17 with the executives from companies, which include Google Inc and Facebook Inc, will continue.

The meeting will reportedly begin in the Oval Office a 16:05 ET (20:05 GMT) and that the White House has yet to release a full list of the executives who were set to attend the meeting. An unnamed industry source told Reuters that invitations were sent to the companies on March 15.

Company sources have told the news agency that Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg will be one of the several executives who have confirmed to be at the meeting. The news agency noted that two had been very vocal about the surveillance practices of the US government. According to spokespeople of companies Twitter Inc an d LinkedIn corp, they will not have any representatives in the meeting as their executives have scheduling conflicts. Washington-focused news website Politico reported that Yahoo Inc CEO Marissa Mayer will not be present in the meeting due to schedule problems.

The meeting was seen as a response to calls on transparency, oversight and restrictions to intelligence gathering of the US government by technology firms. The firms had since formed a coalition focused on the issues of privacy and surveillance concerns called Reform Government Surveillance, Reuters said. In January, Obama presented a series of limited reforms by the national Security Agency on data gathering, which include a ban on eavesdropping on its allies and changes on how NSA should treat telephone and digital data of Americans.

Reuters said the changes had come in the wake of the revelations of secret spying programs by the US made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor.

Tags

President Barack Obama, Edward Snowden leak, NSA Surveillance Program

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