The new director of the National Security Agency paid a visit to Silicon Valley on Monday to send a message: The government is here to help and is nothing like other governments, according to reports.
CNET reports that Admiral Michael Rogers told a collection of professors and students at Stanford University, where he's trying to woo people to join the government rather than Google, it "doesn't do us any good to villainize either side of this argument."
Rogers is saying that working for the government collecting data has rewards "neither Google nor Apple can match," according to the website, and that American data collectors don't do the things counterparts in China or Russia do.
"I don't go into foreign companies, steal intellectual data" and pass it on, he said.
It remains to be seen whether existing American companies will still cool to government surveillance masters.
Tech companies are working on encrypting mobile operating systems as well as webmail, CNET reported, exactly the kind of moves needed to mask data from the government.
