Tech execs urge Obama to limit NSA spying on their users

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Obama talked to the executives about his administration’s work to fix HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance exchange, and announced he’s hired former Microsoft Office Division President Kurt DelBene to lead this effort. The president also encouraged the executives to share their ideas on how to improve the federal government’s procurement and use of information technology.

But NSA spying was clearly the most important topic for the tech executives.

They left the White House without talking to reporters, but they did issue the following joint 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.”

In that statement, eight technology giants urged the U.S. and other countries to reform their surveillance practices, contending the balance between security and privacy “has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual.”

A federal judge on Monday agreed with the tech executives on this point, at least when it comes to NSA’s collection of Americans’ bulk telephone records.

For its part, the White House issued a statement describing Tuesday’s closed-door meeting as “an opportunity for the president to hear from CEOs directly as we near completion of our review of signals intelligence programs, building on the feedback we’ve received from the private sector in recent weeks and months. The president made clear his belief in an open, free, and innovative Internet and listened to the group’s concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs.”