
New US spy satellite logo features world-devouring octopus - Eye_of_Mordor
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/new-us-spy-satellite-features-world-devouring-octopus/
======
spodek
Link-baity title, but warranted, I'd say.

The story is that the government is launching a spy satellite with a logo on
it featuring a "mascot" \-- a giant Kraken-like octopus taking over the
planet. Whoever created it could only have been thinking of their bureau's
unchecked ability to do what it wanted and not the public's perception of it
because the creature, especially its eye, looks menacing, ominous, foreboding,
malicious, malevolent, and borderline evil. It implies the agency is insular,
unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda it cares about more than
anything else, certainly more than your privacy or the consequences of its
actions.

The kicker is a comment that juxtaposes the logo with a warning illustration
saying "Know your communist enemy" with a nearly-identical logo, presumably
implying an evil enemy from the Cold War, which we have become.

The government octopus looks like the Kraken on the top of the wikipedia page
--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken)
\-- except the government one is planet-sized and its eyes seem to have more
evil intent, to me, at least.

~~~
rayiner
It does look menacing and ominous, but it's only supposed to be used against
_them_. Whether you agree with it or not, it's the premise widely shared by
Americans and those in the intelligence agencies and in the military. It
renders your following implication inaccurate: "It implies the agency is
insular, unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda it cares about
more than anything else, certainly more than your privacy or the consequences
of its actions."

No, what it implies is that those who intend to do evil against America cannot
hide anywhere in the world. It's consistent with Roosevelt's Big Stick, which
is something Americans have always embraced:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_ideology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_ideology).
The idea is that we're free at home, but militarily unchallengable on the
world stage.

> The kicker is a comment that juxtaposes the logo with a warning illustration
> saying "Know your communist enemy" with a nearly-identical logo, presumably
> implying an evil enemy from the Cold War, which we have become.

Could we declare a moratorium on false equivalency for like just a week? Last
time I checked, we still have elections and aren't sending political prisoners
to siberia. Not to mention that we haven't killed tens of millions of our own
people. There is that too.

~~~
logfromblammo
The false equivalencies are probably more of a "there but for the grace of
Columbia go we," type of thing. The disease that is Empire never has exactly
the same symptoms.

Last time I checked, the elections did not significantly change policy,
despite a change in the balance of power between parties. The US has the
highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world, mostly over
Prohibition. And the millions we have killed are mostly in other countries
that do not respeck our authoritah.

On top of that, the US has the clanking cojones to demand that banks
everywhere in the world comply with its tax regime, and that every single
packet of communication on the planet be subject to its spying.

At what point do we look down and notice that we're dressed entirely in black
armor, while holding a red lightsaber in one hand, and twirling the well-waxed
end of our luxurious handlebar moustache with the other? Not only have we
become the bad guys, but _we have become a Hollywood caricature of
badguyness_.

Hence the giant octopus. A normal bad guy hides his nefarious deeds behind a
banal logo and seal. An over-the-top, booed-by-the-audience bad guy makes his
logo into a tentacled beast devouring the entire world.

~~~
rayiner
> Last time I checked, the elections did not significantly change policy

What makes you think that people want a change in policy, in some substantive
sort of way? There is a reason that third parties in the U.S. are ridiculed:
most people don't agree with any of their positions. Few people are far enough
to the right that they want to get rid of the Department of Education like the
libertarians, or far enough to the left that they want to revive the power of
the labor unions, like the greens. People who opposed Iraq turned around and
exerted the President to get into Syria.

> The US has the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world, mostly
> over Prohibition.

An interesting aspect of the original Prohibition was that it was, at the
time, perceived as a triumph of Democracy. It was deeply intertwined with the
women's suffrage movement, and succeeded despite the enormous power, money,
and influence of the alcohol manufacturers. It succeeded despite the fact that
at the time, the federal government derived 1/3 of its revenue from liquor
taxes.

The drug war is bad, sure, but it's a sign of a misguided democracy not an
authoritarian regime. I grew up in the suburbs in the early 1990's, surrounded
by soccer moms shrieking "just say no!" This year was the first time since
1969 that a majority of Americans supported decriminalizing marijuana:
[http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/marijuana-
legalization...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/marijuana-legalization-
poll-98687.html). Not ending the drug war, just decriminalizing the most
harmless of the drugs. And not "likely voters" but a group including lots of
young people who won't vote to effectuate that policy. You can't look at the
drug war and call it some sort of failure of democracy, a slide into Stalinist
despotism.

> And the millions we have killed are mostly in other countries that do not
> respeck our authority.

There is a big difference between killing people in other countries and
killing people in our own country.

> to demand that banks everywhere in the world comply with its tax regime

Doesn't seem unreasonable, considering that banks everywhere transact with or
through the United States.

------
mdisraeli
That Octopus is probably one of their tamer patches. The National
Reconnaissance Office missions have the best patches -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches)
and
[http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Pa...](http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Patches_Their_Source_and_Meaning_002.html)
detail them rather well.

~~~
trothoun
I found this[1] one to be particularly reassuring.

[1]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_pa...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_patch.jpg)

~~~
kristofferR
It says "Better the devil that you know"

~~~
VMG
Similar motif on NROL-66:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-66_Patch.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-66_Patch.png)

Can't make this shit up

~~~
DannoHung
This one... I have no idea how this one makes me feel:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/NROL10_US...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/NROL10_USA155_patch.jpg)

Like, seriously, what if they were _all_ like that?

~~~
sliverstorm
I think the way it should make you feel is,

 _Clearly, the patches are silly and I don 't know why I care so much about
this_

------
columbo
Doesn't seem all that surprising, these kinds of things have been around for
years:

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/secret-insignias-
fro...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/secret-insignias-from-the-
black-ops-world/)

[http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-
sinist...](http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinister-
psyops-mission-patches/)

Patches seem more like a game of one-upmanship.

I do like this patch's story, sounds just like something a bunch of engineers
would come up with:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_pa...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_patch.jpg)

> This patch for NROL-49 depicts a phoenix rising from the flames with the
> flag of the United States in the background. The Latin words “Melior
> Diabolus Quem Scies” roughly translates to mean “The Devil You Know,” as in
> the phrase “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”.
> Cryptic. According to NASA, this saying refers to the return of the use of
> an old system after attempting to use a new one, which had resulted in
> failure.

~~~
JackFr
One of the best all time patches:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._617_Squadron_RAF](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._617_Squadron_RAF)

The so-called "Dambusters" motto was "Apres moi les deluge"

~~~
ZoF
Which for those of us who don't know French... "After me, the flood"

------
mapt
Yes, it's a ballsy logo, but on the other hand...

Wikipedia tells us that NROL-39's payload is actually a Topaz synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) node, flying in constellation with two others already in
operation, and two more to come.

This is essentially not-at-all-threatening to civil liberties, being a ground-
elevation mapping platform (and to a second order, some degree of surface
roughness), of not particularly good resolution, at a semi-polar low earth
orbit. There are commercial counterparts to this that are presently in
operation, like TanDEM-X, and an order of magnitude improvement on that
constellation's capabilities would remain insufficient to track anything
particularly interesting beyond the construction over time of large static
structures, with a relatively long revisit time.

~~~
dmix
It should be noted Topaz was the only outcome of a _failed_ $25 billion dollar
project called Future Imagery Architecture:

> the project was killed in what the Times report calls "perhaps the most
> spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy
> satellite projects."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#Future_Imagery_Architecture)

They spent more money than the entire GDP of about 90+ countries for a single
spy satellite:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

A big portion of that money went to Boeing:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/washington/11satellite.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/washington/11satellite.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&#step1)

~~~
jessaustin
Haha, no wonder that in the actual logo, the globe is turned so that the
octopus is feeding on North America. The motto instead should have been "nom,
nom, nom".

~~~
mcguire
Don't give them ideas.

------
zwdr
I like it. It's so super-villainy that I can't help but think it's meant
tongue-in-cheek. And the logo does look awesome.

~~~
rapind
Definitely tongue-in-cheek after seeing some of the other logos.

------
ry0ohki
The military/spy agencies are not concerned about being politically correct.
This is sort of a tradition, if you look at missile projects they all have
logos like these and are called things like "reapers" etc... If we start
seeing this on the White House seal I'll be concerned.

~~~
dm2
It is a little weird to have devils and such strongly worded messages in
mission badges, but it's come to be expected.

There is a huge psychological factor in the DoD about making people believe
you have the biggest stick and can see everything. Kind of like putting an
alarm company sign outside of your door to prevent theives.

[http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-
sinist...](http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinister-
psyops-mission-patches/)

[http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Pa...](http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Patches_Their_Source_and_Meaning_003.html)

[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1)

[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/2](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/2)

------
bowlofpetunias
None of the revelations of US spying of the past year have particularly
shocked or surprised me, and probably not very many here.

The level of sheer insanity displayed in the latest revelations however, with
yesterday's "horde of Orcs" and this sickening slogan "nothing is beyond our
reach" is worse than I could have imagined.

US intelligence has not just gone beyond what is acceptable, they've
completely gone off the reservation and have lost all perspective.
Historically, this doesn't end well.

~~~
Renaud
>Historically, this doesn't end well.

Doesn't end well for us the little people. Those who operate in the shadows,
those have the power to play these games probably have it a lot better since
they undoubtedly operate outside the rules they set for the rest of us
(witness the lack of accountability shown by anyone who has ever been involved
in any of these shenanigans).

~~~
davedx
You think?

[http://articles.sun-
sentinel.com/1991-08-31/news/9102020946_...](http://articles.sun-
sentinel.com/1991-08-31/news/9102020946_1_kgb-vladimir-kryuchkov-vadim-
bakatin)

In this kind of system, nobody is safe, and nobody wins.

~~~
Renaud
It took decades before the tide turned, and it did because of external forces
or it would have continued for a lot longer.

There is no reason to think that today's system would end up the same way
without some huge counter-balancing force that I'm afraid I do not see in
today's world order.

~~~
davedx
I'm not sure which is more depressing to consider. :/

------
rdtsc
This is like the Rapiscan. Really, you are going to name an invasive x-ray-
taking-pictures-of-your-junk device Rapi-scan?

It is slapping you in the face and laughing at it just because they can.
Someone said "Hey I bet I can do this and get away with it. Here hold mah
beer, watch me draw a giant octupus devouring the earth!"

------
eumenides1
the logo reminds me of an image in an old Canadian history text book. it was
an american octopus grabbing all of America (north and south) and part of the
section that talked about manifest destiny (
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny)).

So yes, it is frightening, but only since colonial America.

------
scotty79
It's like the jokes about hitting a women. Once you actually had done it they
are no longer even remotely funny.

~~~
ninjac0der
... or you've done it enough without being shamed from the public you
represent, that it's something you feel comfortable joking about. Analogies
are awesome.

------
spiritplumber
It's the Space Kraken! We must fire SRB's at it!

[http://www.kerbalcomics.com/2012/07/30/episode-12-fighting-s...](http://www.kerbalcomics.com/2012/07/30/episode-12-fighting-
spirit/)

------
aluhut
The current flow of things while I read all of the works of Bruce Sterling
realy freak me out a little bit.

This guy looked in the future somehow. I'm pretty sure about it.

Just finishing "The Zenith Angle"

------
trekky1700
Anyone else just think this is meant to be a bad ass logo and not something to
be psychoanalyzed as some metaphor for the intelligence community?

------
simbolit
this is one of those cases where a parody would inevitably fail. the reality
is its own parody, and perfectly so.

------
walshemj
Tip for the new NSA/CIA/FBI Director

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my
plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

BTW NCIS wont need this as they have Jethro Gibbs just run every thing past
him and if he doesn't hit you on the back of the head your golden.

------
ambler0
The comparison to old anti-communist propaganda in the promoted comment after
the article is priceless.

------
bananacurve
HN has been seriously trolled. You would think smart people have a sense of
humor. You would be wrong.

~~~
iaskwhy
I'd say after some point it starts being black humour instead of just humour.
Even more if the ones doing it are precisely the ones fucking with us. Some
people might like it, some won't.

~~~
bananacurve
The thing is, even if you somehow manage to unilaterally hamsting US
intelligence efforts, which is extremely unlikely because the entire West is
complicit, you will still be spied on unless you protect yourself with extreme
measures which are onerous. Have a laugh, go outside, life is short.

~~~
iaskwhy
You realise you can use that same logic to avoid fighting for anything, right?
I don't really care if life is short, I won't cross my arms.

I did have a laugh though but I would very much appreciate not needing to
laugh at it at all. What I did say is that it doesn't matter if you think you
are smart or not, laughing of certain things have no relation whatsoever with
being smart or not.

------
Sputum
There is an Airforce unit in NH tasked with tracking and maintaining
government satellites which has this incredibly evil looking logo
[http://i.imgur.com/jAzLyvS.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jAzLyvS.jpg)

------
znowi
They should have used Octocat - charming, friendly creature, who keeps your
stuff in order :)

This one will do.

[http://octodex.github.com/images/murakamicat.png](http://octodex.github.com/images/murakamicat.png)

------
charlysisto
Funny nobody spotted it's also commonly used to represent the mafia. Small
side note : mafia's power mainly relies on people's fear of being heard if
they say anything against it... Just sayin...

------
ck2
How did that Google engineer put it?

F- these guys.

Seriously.

~~~
hahainternet
Yeah those arseholes monitoring terrorist cells in Pakistan, those pri...
Wait, why are we mad at these people again?

~~~
g8oz
Because they used that mission as an excuse to go all Stasi on the rest of us.

------
leokun
Well at least they're being honest. Getting rid of the logo is just like
changing the marketing without changing the bigger problem.

------
celticninja
in the same way that abu ghraib/gunatanamo torture and mistreatment of
detainees served as a recruiting tool for al-qaeda and similar organisations i
can see this sort of thing being the equivalent for digital activists.

------
squozzer
"Nothing is beyond our reach" \- except subtlety, obviously.

------
cproctor
It seems to have inadvertently collected North America.

------
eli
Sure, and AT&T features a deathstar

~~~
walshemj
Its only that big cos they are still using strowger gear - the ewoks are there
to provide a source of cheap labour for bank cleaning.

Should have gone with System X guys

------
timbro
"NOTHING IS BEYOND OUR REACH" says their tag line.

Let that sink in for a minute.

It's the mindset of crazies.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Or the mindset of a spy sattelite. I honestly don't get what the fuss is all
about. They wouldn't launch a spy sattellite with the tagline 'We can only see
a very small bit of earth after getting a court to agree on it in triplets',
would they?

~~~
pizza234
The only way one cannot understand "what the fuss is all about" is by ignoring
the context under which all of this is happening.

~~~
sigzero
Or maybe to understand that it is but one logo in a long tradition of wacky
logos.

~~~
narag
Even with that tradition in mind, you can still understand why it calls the
eye.

Filed under "unintentional gallows humor".

------
ninjac0der
I read the comments in this thread and realize for the most part, the US
government can do no wrong. Then I realize you mofos are the real problem.

------
acheron
Trolling achievement unlocked.

U mad bro?

