A number of executives from various tech companies including Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned U.S. Senator Ron Wyden that the government's online surveillance operations will hurt the digital economy, according to Press TV.
The parties met on Wednesday for a roundtable discussion held at the Palo Alto High School gymnasium in California.
The Democratic senator from Oregon listened intently as key personalities from the tech industry outlined the effects of the government spying scandal.
According to Schmidt, the overall impact is "severe and is getting worse," Yahoo News reported.
"We're going to wind up breaking the Internet," he added.
The issue about the government's spying operations gained media attention after Edward Snowden leaked documents from the National Security Agency in 2013.
Based on the whistleblower's revelations, government agencies in the U.S. use various methods to collect information from both citizens and those living in other countries. These include intercepting and monitoring phone calls, text messages, emails and posts on social networking sites.
For Brad Smith, the general counsel for Microsoft, the covert actions of the government could force people to turn away from using the Internet.
"Just as people won't put their money in a bank they won't trust, people won't use an Internet they won't trust," he said.
Ramsey Homsany, another panelist and the general counsel for Dropbox, supported Smith's argument about losing the people's trust.
"The trust element is extremely insidious," he said. "It's about personal emails, it's about photos, it's about plans, it's about medical records."
In response to the points raised by the tech experts, Senator Wyden admitted that he currently does not have a solution regarding the sensitive information that the government has already acquired through its spying techniques, according to CNET.
However, he reassured the panelists that he will urge Congress to act in order to preserve digital security.
"I have to reflect on that," he said. "The cat's out of the bag. I want to get policies right for the future."
"The message here today is that there is a clear and present danger to the Internet economy," Wyden added. "The reality is that we can pass a good bipartisan bill by the end of the year."
