NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden thinks extraterrestrials could be contacting Earth, but because their communications are possibly encrypted, people could not hear the aliens. In a chat with Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Star Talk podcast on Friday, Snowden tackled encryption.
Snowden says properly encrypted communication would be difficult to distinguish from random behavior. He adds that if aliens are smart, they would be encrypting everything, reports CNET.
The former NSA contractor says not even a security agency would be able to understand the perfectly encrypted communications of aliens even if they intercept it. Rather, it would just sound like ordinary noise.
"So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen to other civilizations or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society when all their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means," Snowden points out.
He says all their communications are encrypted by default. "So what we are hearing, that's actually an alien television show or you know a phone call ... is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation," Mirror quotes Snowden.
If that is the case, people from Earth would not realize it received communications from aliens, Snowden adds. In response, DeGrasse Tyson quips, "Only if they have the same security problems as us," quotes Guardian.
Two years ago, Snowden released documents that claim proving alien intelligence agenda has been driving the U.S. government since 1945.
To talk to Snowden, DeGrasse Tyson used a communication system which had a robot-controlled video screen in Moscow where the whistleblower is. Other than alien encryption, the two covered a lot of topics that CNET describes as a wide-ranging chat between two nerds.