What Obama's NSA reform means for tech

When President Barack Obama stepped down from the podium after describing his plans for reforming the United States' surveillance programs, only the most newsworthy and hot-button issues had been addressed. Reforms that the tech industry would most want -- such as prohibiting the undermining of encryption standards -- went unmentioned, and only a few specific reforms that would have an immediate and useful impact on the tech landscape were offered.

When the five-member Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies issued its report in December last year, it made a number of recommendations involving the National Security Agency's use of specific technologies. Among them: not weakening encryption standards, not exploiting zero-day attacks, and having better review and oversight for how the NSA responds to advances in communications technology. All of these issues, especially the NSA's underhanded handling of encryption by way of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) -- and possibly companies like RSA as well -- have sparked ire in the tech world. But President Obama's speech touched on almost none of this, or if it did, it only hinted at it in the most oblique and indirect way. Encryption and the NIST itself weren't even mentioned. It's an echo of the sentiments felt by top technology company executives when they met with President Obama in December 2013 and made their own recommendations for NSA reform. President Obama promised at the time to "consider their input," but made no commitments.