Tech Leaders Push Back Against Obama's Efforts To Divert Discussion From NSA 312
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Guardian reports that while President Obama tried to portray a meeting with tech leaders as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities including ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website Healthcare.gov, senior executives from Apple, Yahoo, Google, Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Netflix said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA. 'We are there to talk about the NSA,' said one executive who was briefed on the company's agenda before the event. After meeting Obama and vice president Joe Biden for two-and-a-half hours, the companies issued a one-line statement. 'We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform.' Many of the senior tech leaders had already made public their demand for sweeping surveillance reforms in an open letter that specifically called for a ban on the kind of bulk data collection that a federal judge ruled on Monday was probably unlawful. Obama seemed sympathetic to the idea of allowing more disclosure of government surveillance requests by technology companies, according to a tech industry official who was briefed on the meeting. Marissa Mayer brought up concerns about the potentially negative impact that could be caused if countries, such as Brazil, move forward with legislation that would require service providers to ensure that data belonging to a citizen of a certain country remain in the country it originates, the official said. That would require technology companies to build data centers in each country — a costly problem for American Internet companies. The decision by the tech giants to press their case in such a public and unified way poses a problem for the White House. The industry is an increasingly influential voice in Washington, a vital part of the US economy and many of its most successful leaders are prominent Democratic political donors."
Re:Obama forgot he works for the Americans ! (Score:4, Informative)
How is that statement racist? I think liberals have forgotten the meaning and just hurl ad homs as shaming language.
Re:Obama forgot he works for the Americans ! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What would happen if... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130927/14413024680/one-telco-exec-who-resisted-nsa-has-been-released-4-years-jail.shtml [techdirt.com]
**His** signature legislation ? (Score:5, Informative)
He allowed his "signature legislation" to be gutted ...
How did he allow **his** signature legislation to be gutted? **He** never offered any legislation. He mentioned some broad guidelines during the campaign and immediately upon election turned it over to the Democratic Party leadership who immediately grabbed Democratic party supporters and lobbyists and went into the back rooms to draft the legislation in private. He immediately abandoned his leadership on the issue.
Re:He's the President. (Score:5, Informative)
When these companies move their data centers abroad, the jobs go with them.
[Citation Needed]
Modern data centers don't actually generate very many jobs. [gigaom.com]
After the initial flurry of construction jobs, Apple's $1 billion+ data center in Nevada is going to result in...
200 contractor positions and 35 full time jobs.
35 full time jobs
Re:He's a *LOUSY* president. (Score:4, Informative)
What if the 100,000,000 voted for neither DEM nor REP? There are other parties in the US, if you don't like the status quo, stop voting for the status quo.