Can Qt signals be public, protected or private?

No. Signals cannot be public or private. Qt signals are protected class methods.

“signals” keyword is defined in qobjectdefs.h (line 69 as for Qt 4.6.1):

#   define signals protected

UPDATE: signals are only protected upto and including all minor versions of Qt 4. From Qt 5.0 onwards they are public. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/19130831.