Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)

SIGNAL ASSESSMENT

The primary directive for any radio transmission detected from IEL is to determine what is trying to be communicated. It is presumed that such signals will fall into one of two categories:

1) Communication not intended for humanity, which we have intercepted.

2) Communication that is intended for humanity. This can further be broken down into two categories:

a) Friendly communication

b) Threats

It is imperative to determine which of these forms of communication we are dealing with as quickly as possible. Type 1 communication might be exceptionally hard to translate, as it is not intended for us, whereas type 2 communication will theoretically be constructed in some manner that we can interpret, most likely via mathematics, as mathematics are universal.