Several petitions submitted to the White House’s We the People website during the past year asked for information to be released about UFOs and extraterrestrials. And, although only one of his petitions has successfully reached the required number of signatures to earn an official response, Steve Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group just launched his fifth petition on the website. This latest attempt asks for the Obama administration to re-investigate the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial craft near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

But it appears that petitions like these aren’t unique to the United States. Simon Sharman, a filmmaker and broadcaster in the UK, has lodged a petition with the UK government requesting parliamentary debate on UFO disclosure in Britain. The wording of this petition is similar to previous We the People petitions in the U.S. It reads: “We, the undersigned, ask the British government to share with its citizens the full truth that it knows about UFOs and any visitations to Earth by beings or probes not from this planet.” The first petition submitted to We the People by Bassett asked the president to “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”

Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, responded to Bassett’s petition in November 2011 with the following statement:

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.

Sharman’s petition is the only one of its kind in the UK, and he is going to actively attempt to engage the British population on the UFO subject by touring towns and cities all over the country during the next year, giving presentations on the subject, free of charge.

U.S. petitions submitted to We the People require 25,000 signatures in one month to merit an official response from the White House. Sharman’s petition to the UK government has a longer time frame, but within the one-year period, 100,000 signatures must be achieved for the issue to be considered for debate in the House of Commons.

The benefit of these petitions is debatable. Some truly believe petitions like these will incite meaningful change, and will result in the disclosure of secret information from governments. Others, however, think it highly unlikely that governments will openly admit a history of public deception, petitions or not.

What do you think about the efforts of those submitting petitions like the ones mentioned in this article? Is there any chance they will be productive, or are they a waste of time?