Tech firms: We don’t want to keep Internet metadata for the government

Tech and telephone companies made clear to Administration officials in a recent meeting that they do not want to see bulk collection activities expanded to Internet data. And they most certainly do not want to see Congress pass mandates to require them to hold that data so the government can collect it.

Administration participants included White House chief privacy officer Nicole Wong, who is a former Google deputy general counsel and Twitter legal director, and cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel. "So the companies made very clear that they don't want the government restarting that program," said one participant in the White House meeting who described the conversation under condition of anonymity. "But if you do, we don't want mandatory retention for Internet metadata." The tech firms at the meeting -- which included Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, among others -- have sent a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress calling for surveillance reform based on principles such as banning bulk collection of Internet communications.

Also at the meeting were officials from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Their discussion focused on the National Security Agency's bulk collection of domestic phone toll logs, which has been a topic of controversy since the program was revealed last June through a leak from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. So the take-away, industry officials say, is that relying on the Federal Communications Commission rule won't be enough if the NSA wants the carriers to keep comprehensive data sets. But even more important, they say, they do not want Congress imposing mandates to keep the data longer than they already do.