Just like recruiters track interesting people, so does the NSA. If you are doing advanced R&D and discuss it on a public forum, the NSA and Big Corps will notic

Just like recruiters track interesting people, so does the NSA. If you are doing advanced R&D and discuss it on a public forum, the NSA and Big Corps will notice, and if the technology is of interest to them, they will probably contact you to discuss. Have you ever received a random call from a company or some unknown party that wants to learn more about one of the projects you are working on? NB: I know of at least one instance where a Big Social Network company contacted someone less than 24 hours after the person wrote a long technical private message to a collaborator. This doesn't mean the Big Social Network was directly reading their private messages -- the BSN may have just been mining messages for keywords -- but the net effect is the same, they notice and will contact you if what you are working on piques their interest. Not all Big Corps mine private messages in this manner -- Google does not do this AFAIK, beyond the algo that displays Gmail ads.