Is SETI a Security Risk?

Dotnaught writes "Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, fears the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) may be putting the earth at risk. As reported in the Guardian, Carrigan frets that alien radio signals could pose a security risk. The report cites a 2003 paper entitled "Do potential Seti signals need to be decontaminated?" but Carrigan's website has more details. Basically, he's calling for isolation of SETI computers and additional security measures. He writes, "To paraphrase Cocconi and Morrison for the possibility of a malevolent SETI signal ...the probability of a contaminated SETI signal is difficult to estimate; but if we never consider it the chance of infection is not zero."" Frankly, I'm more worried about some phishing malcontent then I am about the Grays, but maybe that's just me.

Comments

Ludicrous...

[NardofDoom]

Okay, an ET would have to get a copy of the SETI@Home software to figure out how to hack it. To do that, they'd have to come to Earth and download it. Now, there are trillions of tons of material in outer space, all the same as the stuff here on earth. If an alien intelligence has the ability to cross light years of space, why would they need to land on our planet to infect us with a virus to take out our defenses when they could just as easily land on Mars, Europa, Titan, and any number of asteroids and Kuiper belt objects to get the same stuff, without all the hassle of hacking our systems and fighting a war? If they can travel through space, they'll probably find other worlds just like ours, but not crawling with apes that think they know everything.

We need to get one thing through our thick, ape-like skulls: We are not special. We're just a very specific combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (and other stuff) that can be worried about invasions from outer space.

A long time ago, the prevailing theory was that the Earth was the center of the universe. Now we know that we're not physically the center of the universe, just a mediocre planet circling a mediocre star in a mediocre galaxy. We just need to learn that we're also not the intellectual center of the universe.