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364 extra-galactic to within the solar system (notably, this scheme included the discovery of alien artifacts). The assessment of significance would weigh the level of probable consequences with the credibility of the claim, which can only be estimated subjectively. As this initiative was launched at the International Astronautical Congress in Rio de Janeiro, the method became known as the Rio scale.” The First SETI Protocol was designed to build a consensus favoring open sharing of information after a detection is confirmed. However, that protocol is a nongovernmental document without the force of law or latin A 1 aha. feet ed regulation. Government and private organizations can ignore it if they wish. David Morrison, a senior scientist with NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, noted that many people distrust the way governments and scientists handle information about impacts.” That problem may be even more acute when the issue is the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. The best policy, as Morrison suggested for impacts, is openness together with an effort to educate the media. This suggests a need for a policy decision requiring public release of information about a detection made by a public sector organization or by a nongovernmental organization working under a government contract. That, in turn, implies a need to get relevant government agencies to adopt something like the main principles of the First SETI Protocol. In the case of the United States, obvious candidates are NASA and the National Science Foundation, which support space-oriented research. Hopefully, efforts to assure an open information policy would be extended to the international level. Governmental organizations are unlikely to give this question high pri- ority in advance of a detection. Getting defense and intelligence agencies to adopt such principles may be even more problematic; the whole effort may depend on a few enlightened officials. In the meantime, it may be useful to encourage such agencies to inform the civilian scientific commu- nity of unexplained phenomena that pose no evident threat to national security. Several authors have examined the question of how best to communicate with the public if extraterrestrial intelligence is detected. The social impli- cations group recommended steps that might be taken in advance of detec- tion with educational institutions, news media, and entertainment media.”* As institutional memories are short, those steps would have to be repeated at frequent intervals. Annex: Preparing Releasing the News