MARC ANDREESSEN: The Obama Administration's Meetings With Silicon Valley Reps Are 'For Show'

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REUTERS/Fred Prouser

Marc Andreessen.

Marc Andreessen says that Silicon Valley's meetings with the Obama administration regarding internet privacy and surveillance have been "mostly for show and have produced not even a little progress," he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

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Key representatives from brand name companies like Google and Netflix met with White House staff in December and March in an effort to unwrap the delicate issue of the NSA's domestic spying program as revealed by Edward Snowden.

While the White House cited the meetings as productive, Andreessen remains skeptical.

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"The level of trust in U.S. companies has been seriously damaged, especially but not exclusively outside the U.S. Every time a new shoe drops - and there are 10,000 of them - it serves a blow to the U.S.," he said.

Other than trust, there's also a heavy financial cost at play as well. The New York Times has previously reported that all the NSA hubbub has cost certain companies loads of money - IBM, for example, has spent "more than a billion dollars to build data centers overseas to reassure foreign customers that their information is safe from prying eyes in the United States government."

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Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.