I have a lot of respect for SETI, since an experience of being stuck for a reasonable practical method of measuring and tracking the G/T performance of satellite ground station and ocean bound equipment existed on a program I worked on, and finding that SETI had the answer, and had published it, I produced some software at the tme which guided through the process, doing the associated maths, which involves pointing antennas directly at the sun, taking some measurements, and comparing with public solar monitoring data, then pointing antennas at "dark sky", and comparing answers with known theoretical values. The G/T is then calculated by the software with reasonable accuracy from those measurements using some pretty complex maths, given in the SETI method.

Way I figure it, SETI had no reason to publish that very valuable information, other than to help others who might wish to participate / collaborate with their mission, using their own independent equipment.

If they were monitoriing things they didn't want others to know about then why would they publish such valuable information as how to calibrate G/T performance? For sure, the information is so complex, I am sure we would never have found out how to do it, if SETI had not published their method.

So I don't believe they are keeping secrets of any kind.

If anything it makes more sense that alien intelligence would use SETI as a deliberate decoy, they would easily have the ability with higher technology to deliberately feed SETI with whatever information they wished, to give us whatever kind of impression they might want us to think about them, a little like how now any individual can create a false movie of a UFO, and substitute it in a live video feed, to make it look like a UFO is being monitored by a live camera, when actually it is just a fake video.

If extraterrestrials were that devious, they would easily have the technology to mislead us.

Personally I don't believe ETs have any reason to be devious, so probably are not, but I don't have any problem with folk who prefer to think they are, so as to direct military attention towards them.

Again, we could not threaten them with our weapons technology, it would be useless against whatever defence systems ETs might have, so I wouldn't worry about accidentally harming some well-meaning ETs just because we didn't know they were well-meaning. In fact it is even possible they would deliberately draw our military attention towards them, so as to maybe defuse our obvious hostilities between one another.

Notice there seems to be increased frequency of UFO / UAP sighting reports in areas affected by war, such as Ukraine.

I think in general, ETs, assuming they exist, want us to survive, and they maybe know that there is real danger we could destroy ourselves and our planet right now by use of nuclear weapons on Earth.

If we point those at whatever targets we think might be hostile in space, and even let loose, no-one will be hurt, and it gets rid of the damn nuclear weapons, which only have potential to destroy valuable things on Earth.

In fact, if we really wanted to "Make some noise" so as to attract their attention, it would be worth aiming a nuclear "Blunderbus" into space, and just repeatedly fire it at random, monitoring the trajectories of everything fired, then if we ever see any of those trajectories being altered or terminated by mysterious forces, indicating defence systems being activated, there the ETs would be revealed, I would say.

Btw, all devices "Fired" by such a program would need to be green hydrogen powered, to avoid generating unnecessary pollution.