President Barack Obama discussed surveillance with top technology...

an open letter to the White House and Congress last week outlining principles for an aggressive surveillance law revamp they desire. All those companies with the exception of AOL were scheduled to attend the meeting, according to a list of 15 CEOs and other top executives the White House provided us. “We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the President our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform,” a spokesperson for the companies that signed reform principles last week told us. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both were scheduled to attend, as were AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. “This was an opportunity for the President to hear from CEOs directly as we near completion of our review of signals intelligence programs, building on the feedback we've received from the private sector in recent weeks and months,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting after its conclusion. “The President made clear his belief in an open, free, and innovative internet and listened to the group’s concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs.” According to White House guidance submitted to reporters Monday night, the meeting was scheduled to “address national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures.” There were also executives from Netflix, Etsy, Dropbox, Salesforce, Zynga and Sherpa Global. AT&T, Comcast and Google declined comment. White House pool reports relayed that all 15 invited executives attended. They also said Obama joked with the executives about the Netflix show House of Cards during a group photograph but provided no additional details of the chatter.