messaging extra terrestrial life (METI) dangerous?

i was reading a article about the international academy of astronauts where they talked about active or positive seti or meti. sending messages into space hoping theyd be picked up by extraterrestrial life. the editor of the confrence said i also share similiar concerns

1. we do not know ALL life outside of earth is friendly.
   
2. we also do not know if anything we contacted would interpret this as a "search for life" they may have weapons targetting systems that operate like these waves seti sends out and it may be interpretted as a attack or any number of things
   
3. the language barrier: after contact then what? our message could be recieved as a actual message in their language meaning something hostile or any number of things. after we make contact would we have to continue dialogue . and if we didnt what could this be interpretted as.
   

their is many other things i could go into but aside from this. i want disclosure as much as anyone else, i wanna know if we are alone and have drawn my own theory on such things,but i dont believe it is worth putting us all in danger. you have to look at all situations weighing the good against the bad. some would say they may have a cure for our diseases like aids and cancer,but they may not or they may not even have a want to help us. idonno i can go a little while longer without being sure rather than having them attacking and knowing they exist. or maybe they are friendly and imjust overly paranoid i just go with the saying you learn early in life "better safe then sorry"

personally i'd wait until we have a suitable candidate to transmit to , although one could argue the genie is already out the bottle as we've been leaking radio signals for nearly 80 years.

soon we will have the ability to detect leaked signals from far away planets. I think thats when SETI will become interesting even a null result would force us to admit tech civs are relatively rare



[edit on 21-11-2007 by yeti101]

yes see this meti thing is simaliar to seti@home it works off of hundred of thousands of personal computers worldwide. what i worry about is if someones computer "reaches out and touches someone" then how are we going to maintain dialogue espescially if something as remote as there computer crashing and not sending any info to the METI team happens.