Some of the Top Names in Tech Skip Obama’s Cybersecurity Summit
Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer and others declined White House invitations.
— -- Following a spate of high-profile cyber hacks – from Sony to CentCom – President Obama today convened the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, where some of the top names in tech will discuss how to protect Americans from online crime.
But several key tech execs won’t be there: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, and Google’s Larry Paige and Eric Schmidt all declined White House invitations, opting to send top information security executives instead, according to Bloomberg News.
“Everybody’s online, and everybody’s vulnerable,” Obama said at the summit, drawing laughter after he joked about his own weak passwords: “password, or 123457 … Those are some of my previous passwords. I’ve changed them since then.”
The summit comes as websites struggle to balance consumer privacy with national security. Once some of the president’s most enthusiastic financial backers, the tech sector’s relationship with Obama began to sour when Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA snooping in 2013.
However, neither Zuckerberg, Mayer, Paige nor Schmidt have publicly shared their reasons for skipping the event – and White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz told reporters yesterday that the administration was “pleased” with private sector participation.
According to Yahoo, "given the focus of the conversation, it made the most sense" to send a member of the team devoted to cyber security.
Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, Google’s Vice President for Security Engineering, Eric Grosse, and Facebook’s Chief Information Security Officer, Joe Sullivan, will participate in a panel, as will Intel President Renee James, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney, Box Co-Founder Aaron Levine, and CEOs from American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Bank of America.
Apple CEO Tim Cook (currently under fire for his company’s strict encryption practices, which make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to read criminals’ data) agreed to deliver remarks.
The president today signed an executive order urging private companies to share cyber-threat information with the federal government and with one another.
ABC News' Chris Good contributed to this report.
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