US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden with executives from leading tech companies, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in Washington DC, yesterday.
WASHINGTON: Under fire from courts and allies over a vast US spying dragnet, President Barack Obama faced new heat yesterday from Internet titans who fear the surveillance has crossed constitutional lines.
Obama met bosses of tech giants Google, Apple, Netflix, Yahoo and Twitter at the White House for talks also expected to include an update on the problem-plagued website underpinning his health reform plan.
The meeting came a day after a US court ruled that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone records was probably unconstitutional, in the first blow of a long legal tussle over the programme.
It also took place as Obama considers the findings of a panel he set up to recommend reform of US spy agency snooping in the wake of damaging revelations by fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
The meeting, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, was closed to the reporters and Obama made no public remarks. Press photographers were allowed into the room for less than a minute at the start to take pictures.
Top executives at the talks included include Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Eric Schmidt of Google and Dick Costolo of Twitter.
Obama is familiar with many of the people in the meeting — a number are high profile and wealthy supporters of his political campaigns.
But the revelations of a massive US spy snooping program on the Internet, leaked by Snowden, have strained ties between the White House and the US tech sector.
Eight leading US-based technology companies last week called on Washington to overhaul its surveillance laws following the revelations of online eavesdropping. AFP
