An impressive list of Silicon Valley executives – including Apple’s own CEO Tim Cook – will be meeting with President Obama at the White House today to discuss both concerns over government surveillance operations, and the issues surrounding the online health insurance site, HealthCare.gov.
News of the meeting comes on the heels of an open letter addressed to President Obama and Congress, in which Apple and a group of tech giants threw their substantial weight behind reform and regulation policies regarding digital surveillance. Companies that signed the letter included AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, among others.
Time, who first reported about the meeting, noted that one of the main topics discussed will be the controversial government surveillance operation being conducted by such agencies as the National Security Agency.
The 15 executives are planning on attending the meeting are:
- 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
Following the exposure of various spying operations that are being conducted against the Unites State’s own citizens, tech companies have pushed for greater transparency in the data mining activities of the NSA and law enforcement agencies.
The president’s healthcare plan, known by most as “Obamacare,” saw its website plagued a number of bugs, and confusing information.
