Obama Is A House Of Cards Fan, And Tim Cook Says They Had A “Great Meeting” Today

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Yesterday the White House announced that President Obama would be meeting with a number of tech executives today about HealthCare.gov, the NSA, and how tech is converging the public and private sectors. Another topic of discussion ended up being Netflix’s popular House of Cards series, and apparently Obama is a fan.

While leaving the panel with the President and 14 other American executives, Tim Cook told a reporter that they had “a great meeting.”

In attendance were the likes of Google’s Eric Schmidt, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson.

While Obama wanted to talk mostly about HealthCare.gov and how to improve federal IT, Politico reports that the guests, including Cook, pushed the conversation in the direction of “how the bulk collection of Internet data crossed legal lines and threatened their business.”

A number of the companies represented, including Apple, recently signed an open letter asking for reform with regards to government surveillance. A federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s controversial snooping into phone records is likely unconstitutional. Apple recently pushed for reforming the U.S’s gag order that keeps companies from disclosing the requests for customer data they receive from the government.

The outcome of the meeting today isn’t known, as reporters were made to leave before it started. A lighthearted moment was recorded in which Obama asks the CEO of Netflix if he brought an advance copy of the next season of House of Cards.

Source: Politico

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