New NSA director renews pitch to Silicon Valley

Nevermind the surveillance spat between the US government and the tech titans of Silicon Valley: NSA Director Mike Rogers wants to mend fences.

"We're going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff you can't do anywhere else," National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogers said in a recruiting pitch to Stanford University students. Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

STANFORD, Calif. -- The director of the National Security Agency has a message for Silicon Valley: We come in peace.

Adm. Michael Rogers visited the home of most of the world's dominant tech firms for the second time in the seven months since he took the reins of the NSA from longtime leader Gen. Keith Alexander. In his pitch to around 100 professors, students and reporters gathered to hear him answer questions at Stanford's Encina Hall, he promised attendees he would be in the Valley twice a year and implored potential hires that working at the NSA offered rewards that no benefits package from Google or Apple could match.

He said there was more to what the NSA offered than patriotically serving the US. "We're going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff you can't do anywhere else," he said. "We're going to give you responsibility early, that's part of our culture."

Rogers' appeal comes at a time of high tension between Silicon Valley and the US government. Documents first leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden in June 2013 have led to a cascading series of spying revelations that have soured governmental relationships here.

Tech firms responded by tightening and accelerating their implementation of encryption to prevent customer data from being spied on without a warrant. Google and Yahoo said last summer they are working on tools to encrypt webmail, which is notoriously difficult to obfuscate. Most recently, Apple and Google announced in September that data stored on their mobile operating systems, which power the vast majority of smartphones around the world, will be encrypted by default.

Government agencies have responded by accusing tech firms of helping criminals and terrorists by embracing advanced encryption standards. The Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said in October tech firms should build encryption with backdoors for the US government, while today the new director of Britain's top spy agency, Government Communications Headquarters, said that Internet technologies are used as "command-and-control networks of choice" for the bad guys.

Rogers took a less strident tone, acknowledging that tech firms might have good reasons for responding the way that they have.

"It doesn't do us any good to villainize either side of this argument," Rogers said to a smaller group of reporters and Stanford students after the question-and-answer session had ended. "Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about what is appropriate and not appropriate," he said.

See more here:
New NSA director renews pitch to Silicon Valley