To move aggressively to reform the National Security Agency’s (NSA) controversial surveillance operations, US called the top leaders from world’s biggest technology companies after having discussion with the President of the United States of America “Obama” last week, White house try to resist the attempt so that they portray the encounter as covering a range of broader priorities.
In the meeting called in US, Executives from 15 companies attend the same and have face to face discussion with Obama and Joe Biden, the Vice President, in which they express their views about the NSA wide-ranging surveillance activities, who had achieved the trust of their users. The companies included in the meeting are Google, Apple, Yahoo and Twitter.
NSA is having a collection of Americans’ phone records in bulk quantity which are almost Orwellian” in scope and probably a violation of the US constitution. This is the rule released by the federal judge and the meeting was conducted after a day of the rule passed. White House represent some technical companies which have already expressed their deep concern at the wide-ranging nature of NSA surveillance, and the way it apparently draws information from their systems without their knowledge.
In the meeting, the troubled federal healthcare website issues were also discussed, as they are included in the agenda. But it is seen that technical companies has not made any discussion about the healthcare websites and they are happy that they got the opportunity to share their views or principles on government surveillance in front of the President  that were released by them last week and they urge him to move aggressively on reform. After leaving the White House, all the executives of the company said this in an issued joint statement.
According to the two executives, White house event was in the form of a series of meeting and the duration of meeting was 2 Hrs and 45 Min. In the said duration, the healthcare websites issues were discussed for maximum 45 Min in the absence of both President and Vice President.
Healthcare website and government IT issues discussions were restricted to a pre-meeting with Obama's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and other advisors. After the conclusion of this discussion, President and Vice President arrived for the main discussion which was scheduled and focused on surveillance issues.
Obama has announced regarding the appointment of an executive in Microsoft, which helps in the improvements to the healthcare website, but according to the one executive, NSA surveillance reform was their main topic of discussion.
In the meeting, discussions were raised on various topics such as Prism, an NSA program that collects and mines internet communications, bulk collection of telephone records, reform of the secret Fisa courts, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. This act is 27 yrs old allows emails and digital communications older than six months to be seized without a warrant.
The executives who were present at the meeting including Obama, President of United States of America and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Randall Stephenson, the chairman and CEO of AT&T, Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, and Eric Schmidt, Executive chairman of Google and senior representatives from Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Netflix were also there.
The discussions are also made with respect to the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. After listening the group’s views and recommendations, the President has made clear, that he will consider the input as well as the output of other outside stakeholders.
Due to the NSA revelations, technical executives were still feeling the aftershocks of it and smaller companies are also at a competitive disadvantage. There is no. of executives present at the meeting, who don’t consider Affordable Care Act as a serious problem.
Obama administration is now dealing with the several issues, relating to the NASA. Recommendations of an NSA review panel set up in the wake of Snowden’s revelations were consider by the President and his advisers.
There is a question arising on the constitutionality of the NSA’s program and it can be resolve by only Supreme Court.