Post Commander Hyford heads to Imperial Space and has trouble Identifying Pirates

Having reached the final Federal Rank of Post Commander with a series of fearsome kill missions (pirate hunts) I have headed to Imperial Space and obtained the first rank of Outsider in an ascension mission. Here is a picture of the Python in Blue Loadout to avoid being confused with Pirates.

I found while hunting pirates for Imperial companies in systems without any authority there would often be strong signal sources which turned out to be fire fights between bounty hunters and pirates (and/or Authority vessels). It was difficult to distinguish the pirates who scanned as clean due to not having a local wanted status. They would often be sporting red pirate colours and would also have single names. The bounty hunters tended to have two names and would sometimes tell me to move along. Not wishing to shoot 'innocent' bounty hunters I would sometimes wait until a pirate vessel said something suspicious like "What do you carry...".