President Obama is out to put the public's mind at ease about new revelations on intelligence-gathering, but the Office for the Director of National Intelligence can't quite seem to get with the program of calming everyone down.
Over the weekend, the ODNI was pumping up the launch of a new surveillance satellite launched by the National Reconnaissance Office. The satellite was launched late Thursday night, and ODNI's Twitter feed posted photos and video of the launch over the following days.
Unmistakable was the new NRO logo that goes with this satellite: "Nothing is Beyond Our Reach," it says, featuring an octopus with its arms wrapped around the globe.
It's the kind of picture that you might think up if you were devising an emblem for a villain in a superhero movie.
"NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature," an NRO spokeswoman told Forbes on Friday before launch. "Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide."
While the NRO might be thinking that the octopus represents versatility and intelligence, the mysterious creature has often been used as a symbol for a scary, evil kind of intelligence in popular culture. In the James Bond movie series, the organization long serving as Bond's archenemy was named SPECTRE, had a black octopus logo, and ran an underwater black market called The Octopus. In later movies, SPECTRE simply changed its name to OCTOPUS.
In any case, emphasizing that "nothing is beyond our reach" is not necessarily the image the government may want to be sending out right now, with many in Congress considering reeling in data-gathering. The octopus is, at best, an untimely selection. "You may want to downplay the massive spying dragnet thing right now," tweeted privacy activist Chris Soghoian once it was published Friday. "This logo isn't helping."