Almost All Tech Execs At White House Supported Obama Campaign
President Obama just wrapped up a meeting with high-tech luminaries at the White House, focusing on an agenda of how to clean up HealthCare.gov, and how to stop the snooping by the National Security Agency from continuing to cast a pall over high-tech profits.
The group has a lot to discuss. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that the NSA's collection of millions of telephone records may be unconstitutional.
Here's who was invited.
Many of the leaders are part of a coalition of America's largest tech companies, who last week pressed publicly for surveillance reform — urging the president and Congress to curb the National Security Agency's ability to collect communications like emails and online chats. They also want the OK to publicly share more information about the formal surveillance requests they receive.
In case you were curious, all but two of the execs have supported Obama's election campaigns. A quick search for the amount of money these folks gave to the president's campaigns shows the following totals:
· Tim Cook, chief executive officer, Apple, $2,300 1
· Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter, $12,500
· Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy, $500
· Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO, Netflix, $88,900
· Drew Houston, founder and CEO, Dropbox, $40,000
· Marissa Mayer, president and CEO, Yahoo, $43,100
· Burke Norton, chief legal officer, Salesforce.com, $40,800
· Mark Pincus, founder, chief product officer & chairman, Zynga, $1,108,900 2
· Shervin Pishevar, co-founder and co-CEO, Sherpa Global, $75,800
· Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO, Comcast, $0 3
· Erika Rottenberg, vice president and general counsel, LinkedIn, $2,000 4
· Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook, $78,500
· Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google, $0 5
· Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel, Microsoft, $18,250
· Randall Stephenson, chairman & CEO, AT&T, $25,000 to Mitt Romney 6