As we reported yesterday, Tim Cook and a number of other executives from prominent tech companies met with US President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss a wide range of government and tech-related topics.
Among the topics were said to be the recent struggles with the rollout of the healthcare.gov website and privacy concerns regarding government surveillance. And this afternoon, a short video of the meeting surfaced on the web…
Here’s the clip from Politico (via 9to5Mac). Sorry, it’s in Flash:
While the video doesn’t reveal any new details regarding the discussions, it does give us an interesting look into the secret, closed-door meeting. In it, you can see Cook next to Google’s Eric Schmidt and Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings.
You even see Obama crack a joke about Netflix’s House of Cards:
“I’m just wondering if you brought advance copies of ‘House of Cards’?” Obama said to Netflix head Reed Hastings. The executive laughed and invited the president to show up for a cameo, according to a pool report.
“I wish things were that ruthlessly efficient,” Obama said in reference to the show and its Machiavellian lead character. “This guy’s getting a lot of stuff done.”
Obama met for more than an hour with 15 executives, including Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter’s Dick Costolo, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Microsoft Vice President Brad Smith.
The meeting occurs a day after a federal judge ruled an NSA program that culls American phone records violates the Constitution. A spokesman for one of the companies said the judge’s decision further reinforced their plans to talk reform.
Earlier this month, Apple joined Microsoft, Facebook and other tech companies in urging Congress to reform government surveillance tactics.