Homeland Security to open contact office

Site to be used to recruit tech talent for capital

SAN FRANCISCO — The Department of Homeland Security will soon open a satellite office in Silicon Valley, the agency’s head announced Tuesday at a news conference.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told a crowd at the RSA Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco that the department was in the final stages of opening a Silicon Valley office, but he did not say where that office would be or when it would open.

The office will “serve as a point of contact for our friends here,” Johnson said, but he also admitted that it will serve as a venue to recruit tech talent to the nation’s capital.

“We want to strengthen critical relationships in Silicon Valley and ensure that the government and the private sector benefit from each other’s research and development,” Johnson said. “And we want to convince some of the talented workforce here in Silicon Valley to come to Washington.”

The strategic placement of the satellite office highlights the department’s growing presence in detecting and preventing cybercrime. The department has in recent years become the investigative lead on such cases while coordinating with other agencies.

“In the name of homeland security, we can build more walls, erect more screening devices, interrogate more people and make everybody suspicious of each other, but we should not do this at the cost of who we are as a nation of people who cherish privacy and freedom to travel, celebrate our diversity and who are not afraid,” Johnson said.