3I/ATLAS Raises Red Flags as SETI’s New Post-Detection Protocols Threaten Citizen Rights and Common Sense

The United States should now lead a push for transparency laws governing any post-detection protocols that could affect free speech or scientific freedom. Congress and legal scholars should ensure that no executive order or agency rule ever grants an unelected body authority to suppress or delay public knowledge of a verified extraterrestrial signal. The age of controlled disclosure must end before it begins.

3I/ATLAS reminds us that cosmic mysteries don’t wait for committees. If there is something out there — artificial or otherwise — the conversation must belong to everyone. The public deserves full, unfiltered access to truth, guided by law, not by bureaucracy. SETI’s new protocols, as written, are not the solution. They are a warning that in our eagerness to prepare for first contact, we may already be surrendering the very freedoms that make such contact meaningful.