Obama 'hijacks' tech executive meeting to make 'PR pitch' on Obamacare website fix instead of dealing with NSA surveillance

'We didn't really care for a PR pitch' about Obamacare, said one executive

The White House telegraphed in advance that the president wanted to talk up his efforts to fix healthcare.gov, but no one in the room was interested

Tech executives gathered in the Roosevelt Room to discuss the NSA's overreach in seizing their digital records

A federal judge ruled Monday that the practice violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees against unreasonable searches



During a White House meeting called to brief America's largest tech companies today about government overreach in electronic surveillance, President Barack Obama changed the subject – angering some meeting participants by shifting gears to address the failed launch of healthcare.gov.

'That wasn't what we came for,' a vice-president of a company whose CEO attended told MailOnline. 'We really didn't care for a PR pitch about how the administration is trying to salvage its internal health care tech nightmare.'

One executive said that meeting participants were dead-set against straying from the principal focus of the meeting – the uncomfortable and legally untenable position they are in when the National Security Agency demands access to their digital records.

The White House said in advance that the meeting would include a discussion of healthcare.gov, but the company executive said the only subject that mattered to the participants was the NSA.

'He basically hijacked the meeting,' the executive said. 'We all told the White House that we were only there to talk about what the NSA was up to and how it affects us.'



All smiles: Obama joked with tech executives before focusing on Obamacare and relegating the companies' NSA concerns to second-tier status

Yet Obama, according to insiders, repeatedly peppered the discussion with reassuring words about how the Affordable Care Act's marquee website was well on its way to becoming functional.



The change was so noticeable that an AFP/Getty photographer assigned to cover the event noted in a photo caption only that Obama was there to 'meet with executives from leading tech companies to discuss progress with healthcare.gov.'



One executive of a company represented at the meeting told The Guardian that a change of focus 'is not going to happen. We are there to talk about the NSA.'

Another said issues other than intelligence agencies' snooping are 'peripheral.'

The unnamed business leader told the paper that 'there's only one subject that people really want to discuss right now.'

The 15 companies, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Apple and Etsy, issued a one-line joint statement after the 150-minute marathon meeting in the White House's Roosevelt Room, saying that they '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.'

There was no mention in the statement of healthcare.gov.

Hands on the table, Joe: Vice President Biden was seated next to one of the meeting's few female participants, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer. Biden made headlines yesterday for his roving paws at a holiday party

A serious matter: Reporters on Tuesday put White House press secretary Jay Carney on the spot about about a federal judge who declared that the NSA's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records is unconstitutional

But in its statement to reporters about the meeting, the White House played up the significance of focusing portions of the get-together on how to fix the government's disastrous health insurance website.

Obama and the executives 'discussed a number of issues ... including the progress being made to improve performance and capacity issues with heathcare.gov,' the statement began.

After announcing a changing of the guard in the push to repair the site, the White House noted that '[f]inally, the group discussed the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures.'

A group of eight tech companies, including some in attendance on Tuesday, asked Obama last week for an overhaul of the surveillance laws that govern the NSA.

'The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual – rights that are enshrined in our Constitution," they wrote in an open letter to the president.

Distraction: Obama took time out from the supposedly NSA-focused meeting to announce that Jeff Zients (L) would be replaced as his healthcare website czar

A federal judge ruled Monday that their concerns about government spy programs are well-founded.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon declared that the NSA's broad seizures of telecommunications companies' call records violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That provision protects Americans from unreasonable searches.

The ruling is already being seen as partial validation for the exiled leaker Edward Snowden, who exposed details of the NSA's huge data collection program to the public this year.

'I have significant doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism,' the judge wrote in his ruling.

'I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval.'



In Tuesday's meeting, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer was seated next to Vice President Joe Biden, whose wandering hands were the subject of nationwide jokes on Monday.