President Barack Obama discussed surveillance with top technology and telecom CEOs Tuesday. They met for two-and-a-half hours, according to the White House press pool report. Eight tech companies -- AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo -- released 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.

The administration’s nominee for Central Intelligence Agency general counsel does not personally believe phone surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment, she told the Senate. The Senate Intelligence Committee held an open hearing Tuesday reviewing the nomination of Caroline Diane Krass, currently principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, to be CIA general counsel. Multiple senators quizzed her on Monday’s Klayman v. Obama district court ruling that National Security Agency phone surveillance likely violates the Fourth Amendment (CD Dec 17 p3). Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, raised the question early on. “I haven’t had a chance to study it carefully,” but the decision reflects the battle over the “appropriate balance” being sought in surveillance law, Krass told him of the ruling. Congress appears poised for “legislative response” and she would follow any laws enacted, she said. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, followed up: “I want to ask your personal opinion of whether or not you agree with the judge’s decision.” Krass did not agree, she said. “I have a different view of the Fourth Amendment,” one in which phone metadata are not protected, Krass said, calling the 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland “good law.” That case has lent legal backing to the U.S. treatment of metadata. She did say much has changed since then and some of those factors are “worth considering.” In written answers to Senate Intelligence questions submitted before the hearing, Krass said she’s not “personally familiar with the CIA’s Attorney General Approved-procedures” on the collection, retention or dissemination of data on U.S. citizens but would make the question a priority if necessary. At the hearing, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated an earlier statement. “I welcome a Supreme Court review,” Feinstein said. “It’s been more than 30 years” since Smith v. Maryland, she said, telling the nominee, “I think your position is really most important in this. … You are going to encounter some heat from us in that regard.” It’s hard to exercise oversight if the legality is murky, Feinstein said. King said “secret agencies tend toward abuse” and told Krass to be an advocate for the people of the U.S., not the director of the CIA or director of national intelligence.

The FCC Media Bureau granted a Comcast petition Tuesday to exempt the cable provider from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for 39 communities in California, said a Media Bureau order (http://bit.ly/1bYgizW). Comcast’s petition cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The deregulation affects just under 600,000 California households, including the communities of Roseville, Salinas and Santa Rosa.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn emphasized channel sharing for participants in the broadcast spectrum incentive auction. “Broadcasters get to participate in the auction, receive auction proceeds, stay on the air and continue to serve their audiences,” she said last week at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board meeting. Stations may choose how to share their 6 MHz of bandwidth and noncommercial stations may channel share with commercial stations, she said. The broadcast TV industry “has been, and should continue to be, an important means of meeting the critical information needs of our nation’s communities,” she said. The auctions will be voluntary and the FCC must make reasonable efforts during the channel repack “to preserve the coverage area and population served of each broadcast television licensee,” she said. “Of course, the forward auction will not be a success unless a sufficient number of broadcast television stations participate.” Clyburn also commended the public broadcasting community for its involvement in the American Graduate Program and the Ready to Learn program.

Common Cause backed the FCC pulling a draft media ownership order circulated by then-Chairman Julius Genachowski that was a “bad idea to allow billionaire moguls to control even more of our media,” said the nonprofit on its blog Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jfr7Df). It said current Chairman Tom Wheeler deserves credit for saying the draft will be reworked. The order, which would have allowed some types of broadcaster-newspaper cross ownership while attributing some TV station resource sharing deals in a way that might have curtailed them, was yanked from circulation earlier this month (CD Dec 16 p1). “It was an ugly dinosaur still stalking the Commission’s hallways long after it should have been extinct,” said Special Adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative Michael Copps, a former Democratic commissioner. “Maybe, just maybe, the new FCC will go on from here to become a true protector of the people’s interest on the people’s airwaves.”

Several lawmakers praised Monday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that National Security Agency phone surveillance likely violates the Fourth Amendment (CD Dec 17 p3). Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., praised the ruling on Monday. But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pointed to other legal support for surveillance and said the Supreme Court must resolve the question. “Clearly we have competing decisions from those of at least three different courts (the FISA Court, the D.C. District Court and the Southern District of California),” Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/19QvjQn). “I have found the analysis by the FISA Court, the Southern District of California and the position of the Department of Justice, based on the Supreme Court decision in [1979’s Smith v. Maryland], to be compelling.” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., author of the original Patriot Act and the surveillance overhaul the USA Freedom Act, said the decision “highlights the need to pass” his legislation, according to his office (http://1.usa.gov/1bMrU8n). “I am encouraged by the district court’s ruling,” Sensenbrenner said. “It will add to the growing momentum behind the USA FREEDOM Act, which has garnered support from a large, diverse bloc of my colleagues and the business community. The Executive Branch should join Congress to institute meaningful reform.” Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Tom Udall, D-N.M., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., support the ruling and back updates to surveillance law. The ruling “hits the nail on the head,” Wyden said (http://1.usa.gov/1gD2yOA), in particular highlighting the ruling’s emphasis on the ineffectiveness of the surveillance. “This ruling dismisses the use of an outdated Supreme Court decision affecting rotary phones as a defense.” Paul said the ruling is “an important first step in having the constitutionality of government surveillance programs decided in the regular court system rather than a secret court where only one side is presented,” calling phone surveillance an abuse (http://1.usa.gov/18Oxu6G). “Today’s ruling is an important first step toward reining in this agency but we must go further,” Sanders said (http://1.usa.gov/IRlBX6). “I will be working as hard as I can to pass the strongest legislation possible to end the abuses by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.” Blumenthal backed congressional action, “creating greater transparency and a special advocate whose client is the Constitution to advocate on behalf of Americans’ liberty and privacy,” he said (http://1.usa.gov/1hYbYEO). Tom Udall said he hopes Monday’s “ruling will prove to be an important milestone on the path toward increased transparency and comprehensive reforms to our surveillance programs, including an end to bulk phone record collection and the creation of a new privacy advocate within the secretive FISA court” (http://1.usa.gov/18SLmQl). Privacy advocates and Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor responsible for the surveillance leaks earlier this year, also hailed the ruling.

A total of 189.2 million Americans watched 47.1 billion online content videos in November, said comScore Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cz5XHe). Views of video ads totaled 26.8 billion, said the report. Google Sites were the top “online video content property” with 163.5 million unique viewers, driven primarily by YouTube, the report said. AOL ranked second with 73 million viewers, followed by Facebook (66.2 million), News Distribution Network (51 million) and Yahoo (45.8 million), said the report.

ViaSat’s Exede Evolution satellite Internet plan will offer unlimited access for email and webpages using download speedus of up to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 3 Mbps. The service “eliminates data usage caps for these essential online services and provides a fixed cap for other activities, such as video streaming,” ViaSat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18xcdDJ). ViaSat is offering the plan in 30 states, “which includes much of the Exede national footprint,” it said. The expansion of the service plan represents the second phase of its introduction earlier this year, ViaSat said.

The Senate must “push the envelope even further” on curbing abusive patent litigation than the House did when it passed the Innovation Act (HR-3309) earlier this month, said Application Developers Alliance President Jon Potter Monday during a CEA-sponsored Google Hangout session. The Senate Judiciary Committee is to begin considering the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) at a hearing Tuesday. The bill, introduced by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, mirrors some portions of HR-3309 but draws more heavily from legislative recommendations from the White House. The bill does not include provisions on fee-shifting or changes to discovery rules for patent cases -- two items that drew criticism from some opponents during the debate in the House (CD Dec 6 p11). The Senate bill would also give the FTC the authority to take action against patent assertion entities that send deceptive demand letters. The Senate should particularly focus on stays on patent lawsuits against end-users and provisions that would improve patent quality during the review process at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Potter said Monday. Tuesday’s hearing will shape the Senate debate, but so will the opinions of constituents who will speak with their senators over the holidays, Potter said. Opponents of HR-3309 argued that the bill would hurt small businesses -- something Engine Advocacy co-founder Mike McGeary called “false.” The debate over possible legislation has brought together advocates “from all walks of life,” with a majority of them coming from small businesses, he said. Despite the criticism, the House passed HR-3309 with a bipartisan majority, which itself was a “clear signal to the Senate that the time for action is now,” McGeary said. “This is something that can’t wait for another election cycle.”

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., named the invited witnesses for Wednesday’s scheduled hearing on data brokers (http://1.usa.gov/1bIkFOs). Rockefeller announced the hearing last week. The FTC is to release its own study on data brokers in early 2014 (CD Nov 18 p21), and the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich will represent the agency Wednesday. Don Robert, CEO of Experian -- a company that has been part of Rockefeller’s ongoing investigation into data broker business practices (CD Oct 11/12 p12) -- will also testify. Direct Marketing Association Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Jerry Cerasale is to testify on behalf of industry. World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon will represent WPF’s privacy interests. And Annenberg School for Communication Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Joseph Turow will testify.