By “Matt Lewis & The News” guest blogger Emily Zanotti
Even though the Most Transparent Administration in History has committed to informing the American people of every intrusion into their private lives, figuring out the Obama Administration’s approach to spying on it’s own citizens is harder than discerning whether Ke$ha is a poorly-mixed teen pop star or a complicated performance art project. Actually, the latter is probably easier, since a poorly mixed teen pop star would tailor the garbage bags before she wears them.
Anyway, as Jay Carney dodged questions about the extent to which the NSA monitors internet traffic — they examine only a small percentage, they catalog and label the rest — Barack Obama met with several tech company heads in a closed-door, off-the-calendar meeting on NSA surveillance.
U.S. President Barack Obama met with the CEOs of Apple Inc, AT&T Inc as well as other technology and privacy representatives on Thursday to discuss government surveillance in the wake of revelations about the programs, the White House confirmed on Friday.
Google Inc computer scientist Vint Cerf and civil liberties leaders also participated in the meeting, along with Apple’s Tim Cook and AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, the White House said in confirming a report by Politico, which broke the news of the meeting.
“The meeting was part of the ongoing dialogue the president has called for on how to respect privacy while protecting national security in a digital era,” a White House official said.
As the meeting was covered by the Cone of Silence as well, details are scarce, but this time, there were a few civil liberties organizations present, though its unlikely that the President was able to tell them that he wasn’t spying on Americans so much as he was checking up on their social lives, as he did on The Tonight Show.
These tech companies have, of course, not had an easy week. Although they were blessed to be able to speak one-on-one with the President, the San Francisco Gate revealed that rumors of widespread NSA surveillance aren’t just taking their toll on the faith in government us libertarians were already devoid of. As users — domestic and foreign — move to protect their data from the NSA’s roving eye, they’re abandoning American cloud computing companies and threatening the industry with a $35 billion dollar loss.
So while the President may not have lived up to his promise to open the doors on governmental activities, America, at least he’s staying true to his signature economic development plan. And we should all feel good about that. And probably start hoarding canned food.
Emily Zanotti is a political communications consultant and the editor-in-chief of NakedDC.com, an incredibly fantastic political gossip and humor blog that all of you should read.