Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute wrote an article which describes in brief what will happen when a candidate signal is received. It does leave out some of the verification tests, but you will note in this article that when it looks like a real signal, the astronomer will then call his buddies elsewhere in the world and have them verify. As the article states, “The process will take several days.”

This is the major flaw in existing SETI protocols. The chance alignment of transmitting and receiving antennas will not remain for “several days”. No increase in receiver sensitivity, the number of channels, or signal to noise ratio, will resolve this issue.

What SETI needs is some way to verify, close to instantly, the reception of a signal at multiple locations around the planet. This requires international co-operation which is in short supply. International rape and pillaging seems to be the rule of the day. Without resolving this issue, SETI will not detect alien signals.