Arrange themessage in 73 rows of 23 numbers, and you get a picture painted in bits. ( Click here to see the decoded Arecibo message.) It was a novel approach, but themessage was hidden, and it depended on aliens making leaps of logic in order to decipher it.
However Lib Dem Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames said the bill's provisions could only be said to send the wrong message because some Labour politicians had wrongly accused the government of pursuing a "hidden agenda".