I find it hilarious that the Obama White House doesn't seem to be taking the tech companies' position seriously. In fact, the White Houses's almost complete non-response to the NSA revelations has damaged their credibility in my mind much moreso than the Healthcare.gov debacle. Me and other tech-industry-type people I talk to understand why code projects fail and break, so, while we shake our heads at the poor management and deployment of this website, we "get it." It doesn't really concern us.

This Snowden thing is really getting out of hand, though. I initially was anti-Snowden when the first leaks came out; I was unconcerned that the government might be storing metadata. But I am certain that the NSA has been lying about the scope of their collection and it's legality. As more documents leak, I become increasingly concerned with the apparently blank cheque for surveillance that the NSA has been issued. It has personally shaken my trust not only in specific channels of communication, but the entire internet in general. It's troubling the steps one must now go through to have a semblance of secure communication: I have trouble trusting ANY software for security because I have no idea what the NSA is allowed to do (I suspect its almost anything if it's en masse). The one percent doctrine is the scariest thing to come out of the Bush White House, which wasn't exactly a beacon of freedom.

The wheels of law and government turn slowly, which is, generally, a good thing, but I believe that the gov'ts policies regarding information collection need to be addressed ASAP. They're hurting the United States' already shaky foreign credibility, and they're hurting American companies' interests as well. Somebody needs to light a fire under Congress's or the White House's seat to get the ball rolling. Judge Leon's ruling is a good step, but I'm disappointed and ashamed that the first president I cast a ballot towards is stonewalling on such an important issue.

I am reminded of something I once read the President of France had said to someone after meeting President Obama for the first time. "He's a show horse, not a workhorse."

That's exactly how I feel reading about a WH meeting with Tech CEOs who want to discuss this NSA ridiculousness while the White House handlers spin that it's about asking their advice on healthcare.gov or some nonsense. It's just unserious and totally not confidence inspiring.

Interesting that they were willing to be seen forcing the agenda here, contra the WH's preferred positioning. They think the downsides of complicity with the NSA program are worse than those of pissing of the White House. But there is a long way to go here.

Someone will eventually have to confront the NSA's rhetoric "we can't stop terrorism / people will be killed if we constrain surveillance". I wouldn't expect that from this White House, or many in Congress. You can push on and even piss off the President, but if he won't push the NSA you have to generate political pressure to force him to do just that.

I'm not sure that pressure is available under the argument that tech giant business models require transparency. That frames the issue as commerce vs security, I don't think that's a big vote getter. The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm okay with that, because I'm more worried about a tyrannical government, and We are bigger than the Bad Guys. But I'm not sure the electorate sees it my way.

I suppose the likeliest solution is some tacit recognition that proper privacy does allow more terrorism / drug traffic / child porn. I worry that thus we won't get really proper privacy, or a real political commitment to it.

I'm glad these CEOs carried this to the President, but I don't think they're going to be the whole solution to this.

Mentioning Healthcare.gov seems bizarre. In what possible way does Yahoo, Netflix, or AT&T have anything useful to discuss about a large integration product with the head of state?

I appreciate the fact that the companies are focusing on this. However, its unclear to me why they didn't try any of this before Snowden leaked all this information? So if no one knew about it, these tech companies were OK sharing with the government?

>despite the White House declaring in advance that it would focus on ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, among other matters.

I'm sure a bunch of tech CEOs and politicians are going to come up with a fantastic scaling solution for the beleaguered website. Let's see, how would that go?

Obama: "I was thinking about migrating to Mango and getting in on some of that sharting I keep hearing about".

Mayer: "No Mr. President, you need more nginx servers to do SSL termination, your Apache servers can't handle the load".

Then Biden: "That's what she said..."

At which point every one stops and looks at him.

Interesting to see the way that change is playing out:

1) Person blows whistle / leaks information about government surveillance

2) World trust in US firms is damaged, especially internationally. Foreign firms and governments hesitate to trust US firms with their data. US firms lose contracts and relationships sour.

3) US firms whose interests are hurt lobby for surveillance reform

Personally, I think the crux of the issue is the doctrine that, if a company is a party to handling my data, whether privately or as part of delivery to another person, that company may voluntarily share information with the government. I think it's a failing of our constitutional law against unreasonable search and seizure that this precedent was set. (I'm not a lawyer but that is my understanding - please correct me if I'm wrong.)

In the modern world, virtually all of our communication involves other companies, and so if those companies can voluntarily act as effectively agents of the government in providing the government data, then from my perspective this dodges the intent of the Fourth Amendment. Especially given modern adoption of cloud computing - my papers and personal effects are rarely present solely on my property. Technological progress in cloud computing should not erode fundamental constitutional protections. With that precedent, it has.

As all data increasingly goes digital, it is wrong for our society to present a conflict of interest: either keep my data myself, and lose out on modern technology; or use modern technology and be subject to omnipresent surveillance. The better option is to reform our laws so that constitutional protections extend to digital information, wherever it is kept, as well as "papers".

Would it be reasonable to change the laws of our society such that no person may share another person's digital information with the government [1], except as required by law, or unless they specifically believe that person guilty of wrongdoing? Perhaps such an approach could form the basis for much more effective protection against unreasonable search.

[1] I realize getting this right is going to be tough. Perhaps it's "no digital information created by the person, or metadata about that information". What I'd be looking for is a reasonable digital equivalent of "papers and effects".

Perhaps such a relationship could be negotiated through private contract today (e.g. terms of service). The asymmetrical relationship makes this difficult to achieve as a consumer. (This leads me to wonder: do the terms of service of major Internet firms permit them to share your information with the government?)

Maybe the first place to start is pushing Internet companies to adopt terms of service that prohibit sharing your information with government agencies (or with any other firm who does not have such a clause in its relationship with the first company), except as required by law.

If the tech companies who met with the President want to lead reform in this space, they could begin by changing their terms of service to explicitly prohibit voluntarily sharing your data with governments or firms who may voluntarily share that data with governments. Of course, that might strain their relationships with those governments, and harm their business in a different way, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I'm not saying that business reasons are the only reasons. I do believe that plenty of people and firms want to change the situation on its merits. It's just also interesting to me to look at this issue from the perspective of business impact.

Interesting to me that US tech firms are more bothered about US international reputation that the government.

Anyway, I have said a few times these tech companies should step up to the plate and it looks like they are. Good.

People might criticize their motivation, suggesting that its all about money, but from at least my non US POV, the US is all about money, its as pure capitalist as it gets. There for the US its self is all about money. So, what else is going to motivate US people or bushiness? It was always going to be about money.

What I think is needed now is for these tech companies to use some of their immense wealth to put up some sort of political opposition, campaign, candidates or what ever. Talking and finger wagging is good, but they need to put their money where their mouths are.

But over all, positive. Lets see what happens.

Edit: Just to add, Im not making a moral judgement about the US being all about money. That is another conversation.

Those tech companies possess immense power and influence, both in lobbying and even more so on the internet with the people. If they really wanted to "push back", this story would be over in the summer. One Google could turn the tides completely if stood up for what it once believed. I see this sudden "reform" as no more than a show for the public.

What is Pincus doing there? [1]

Does anyone know if there are any backdoors built into Zynga games?? Their userbase is still impressive.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

Given then the number of CEOs attending whose business model is surveillance [1], a cynical person would suggest that they're just upset about the competition.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...

I for one don't really care about the motivations of these companies. Im just glad they are doing something about it.

This NSA debacle is just one more nail In the coffin of American Emperialism. And America better wake up and change her ways if she wants to continue to enjoyed the privllaged global position she has had for so many years.