But governments themselves are believed to target other nations to search for intelligence, information and data that might be useful.
For a long time, the people most interested in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence came from "hard science" disciplines like astronomy or physics; to them, the main obstacles seemed technical (building radio telescopes, processing signal data).
Out of concern for the future of planetary exploration, Dr. Murray joined with the astronomer Carl Sagan and the aerospace engineer Louis Friedman to found the Planetary Society, a public advocacy organization dedicated to exploring the solar system and searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.
In fact, much of the content that appears on the Web is made by robots for robots, a fact that should give anyone searching for artificial intelligence pause.
"We expect that FAST could be a very powerful radio telescope for searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Staring into the eye of a Cuban rock iguana or a Southern ground hornbill is a beautiful experience, but searching for the intelligence and kinship we see in homo sapiens can leave one ambivalent.
It is what happened next that has investigators searching for evidence that intelligence was manipulated for political purposes.
After establishing outpost lines and searching for prisoners and intelligence, the brigade bivouacked at Suweileh for the night, to the east of Ain Hummar on the north western road to Amman.
If Special Plans was going to search for new intelligence on Iraq, the most obvious source was defectors with firsthand knowledge.
He created the Breakthrough Prizes and last year launched the Breakthrough Initiatives, including a $100 million, 10-year effort to search for extraterrestrial intelligence using optical and radio telescopes.
While undercover, he says he was told to search for "any intelligence that could have smeared the campaign.
