In the re-release of "ET", the government agents' guns were changed by computer to radios. I guess if ET turned out to be dangerous, they could beat him to death with the radios.

And the dialog is changed: where Elliot's mother originally told him he couldn't go out on Halloween dressed as a terrorist, in the new version she says he can't go out dressed as a hippie. Speilburg apparently feels that we are so weak-kneed that just hearing the word "terrorist" will cause us to fall apart.