In a recent conversation with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson asked about communication with alien civilizations, and how such messages might be encoded.
In any advanced civilization, there is only a “small period in the development of their society when all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means,” Snowden said. And that if we pick up signals emanating from that civilization’s homeworld, such as television shows, phone calls, or satellite communication, it will most likely be encrypted because “all of their communications [would be] encrypted by default.” Because of how encryption works, those encrypted messages would be “indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation.”
Snowden was right about encrypted content looking like noise, but he was wrong about what scientists can tell by looking for alien metadata. Whether or not aliens use encryption, we can tell the difference between signals sent through space using transmitters and natural sources of radio signals — such as the radiation left over from when the universe first cooled down enough for photons to decouple themselves from the rest of matter, shortly after the Big Bang.
You can read the rest @
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/how-scientists-search-the-cosmos-for-alien-signals-even-encrypted-ones/
We can't even talk to most of the people on this planet, so how do we expect to have an intelligent conversation with ET?
By the way, encryption of data is a sign of selfishness and distrust. If ETs have these shortcomings, I don't think I want to meet them. They'd just be more powerful versions of us, and quite likely to squash us like a bug.
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