December 17, 2013.

Obama Tries to Ease Silicon Valley's Concern's Over Spying

They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He pulled her closer against him. Her head rested on his shoulder, the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon dung. She was very young, he thought, she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.

WASHINGTON----President Barack Obama, under fire from Silicon Valley over the government's surveillance programs, met with technology executives Tuesday to try to ease their concerns about the National Security Agency's spying operations.

"Actually it would have made no difference," he said.

The meeting came one day after a federal judge challenged the constitutionality of the government's telephone-records surveillance programs and a week after a group of technology companies complained in a letter to Mr. Obama and Congress that the government snooping violated basic civil liberties.

"Then why are you sorry you didn't do it?"

The White House, in a statement after the meeting, said the president told the executives that he believes in a free and open Internet and made clear that he "will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs."