[mindcrime]

I think they can, but a lot of it comes down to your willingness to play "the game". An example of what "the game" can look like is illustrated in this email we received from In-Q-Tel:

    Hi Phillip,

    I am with the investment team at In-Q-Tel
    (www.iqt.org), which is the strategic 
    investing arm of the CIA and other US 
    intelligence agencies. We invest in 
    innovative companies that are building 
    cutting edge commercial technologies that 
    may enable the agencies we work with to 
    rapidly develop and deploy new capabilities. 
    In addition to investing, we also in almost 
    all cases purchase some amount of product 
    and services from these companies. 
    Our customer agencies then frequently 
    make follow on purchases directly 
    with the companies.

    I recently came across some news 
    coverage of your company. I am contacting 
    you because your social collaboration 
    technology might be of interest to the 
    agencies we work with. Would you be 
    interested in having an exploratory conversation?

    Please let me know if you have some 
    time over the next couple of weeks to talk further.

So in this particular case, I think the implications are pretty clear - "take money from us, and become a puppet of the military-industrial-defense-espionage complex (MIDEC), and we'll help make sure the MIDEC buys lots of your product".

Possibly a good deal for people who are into that sort of thing, but we chose not to pursue it, as I don't have any interest in supporting the CIA/NSA/DIA/DHS/FBI/ETC.