Tim Cook and Other Tech Executives Meet with President Obama to Discuss Government Surveillance

According to a report from Politico, President Barack Obama met with CEO Tim Cook and a of other tech executives yesterday for a closed-door discussion ongovernment surveillance. The site says this was the second meeting of its kind this week.Cook was joined by the likes of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Google’s chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf, and Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn, to talk about varioussurveillance strategies and tother topics such as the recentNSA PRISM programscandal…Here’sTony Romm from Politico:“President Barack Obama hosted CEO Tim Cook, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Google computer scientist Vint Cerf and other tech executives and civil liberties lders on Thursday for a closed-door meeting about government surveillance, sources tell POLITICO.The session, which Obama attended himself, followed a similar gathering rlier this week between top administration officials, tech-industry lobbyists and lding privacy hawks, the sources said. Those rlier, off-the-record discussions centered on the controversy surrounding the NSA as well as commercial privacy issues such as online tracking of consumers.”Both the White House and the executives that attended the meetings declined to comment on what was talked about. But sources close to the site say the meetings were inresponse to the president’s directive to have more national dialogue about privacy protection.Tim Cook’s attendance is particularly of note because was one of the 9 companies named in the PRISM scandal that was firstbrought to lightin June. The far-rching program is said to allow the NSA to access private user data without the need for a warrant., like most of the named tech firms, hasdenied allegationsthat it was ever involved in such a program. In July, the iPad makerjoined an allianceof over 60 companies tocall upon the US government to allow them to report more specifically on security requests.