dailymail | He explained that if aliens exist and they are intelligent, they will already be encrypting their communications, but this means, ‘if you have an alien civilisation trying to listen for other civilisations, or our civilisation trying to listen to other aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society when all of their communications will be set at the most primitive and unprotected means.’
He pointed out that perfectly encrypted messages wouldn’t be detected by a security agency looking for such communications, and would instead seem like background noise.
Therefore aliens may be communicating but humans are deaf to any messages being broadcast.
‘When we think about everything we're hearing through our satellites and everything that they're hearing from our civilisation - if there are indeed aliens out there - all of their communications are encrypted by default so what we are hearing that's actually an alien television show or a phone call or a message between their planet and their own GPS constellation (or whatever it happens to be), is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation,’ he said.
Tyson said: ‘You're assuming they [aliens] have the same security issues that we have here on Earth,’ to which Snowden replied: ‘Maybe they're a little more enlightened'.
Snowden is not the only person who believes aliens may be trying to make contact with us, but we are unable to hear them.
