3 ms·

tl;dr: it's a geeky reference to an issue which arose during testing (the testing team's joke was that the 'octopus harness' had taken over the world). A harml

by zeveb 11y ago

tl;dr: it's a geeky reference to an issue which arose during testing (the testing team's joke was that the 'octopus harness' had taken over the world). A harmless instance of esprit de corps.

chris_wot 11y ago
Evidently such geeky awesomeness might destabilise the national security of the United States. I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". The patch, however, is not. Makes me wonder at what point a classification of secret or top secret will be entirely devalued. If this is a state secret, then anything could be a state secret.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  The classification system has been abused to the point of devaluing classified contents for decades. I think there's only one real reason for this: only a very few things are real state secrets, but there's a ton of budget overruns, bad ideas, career ending blunders, "favorite" vendors, vendors that hire close relatives, "independent" consultants, and similar mixes of incompetence and borderline embezzlement. It's far too easy to just classify some episode, and keep it from blowing up into a rebuke or termination for cause. There's little to be gained by carefully examining something and classifying it appropriate, and a lot to loose by under-classification.
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    Just to underline this point, here's a very modern (incident in May, 2014, reporting apparently Jan 23, 2016) nuclear weapon mishap that was hidden: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-damage http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-... I will grant you that the Air Force tried double-speak and obfuscation to hide the incident rather than over-classification, but they did refuse a FOIA request about it and hid the incident from a Secretary of Defense appointed commission.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". No, it wasn't. The original article, as you can clearly read in the picture, was Secret. That's not absurd: see all those black boxes in the unclassified version of the article? Those are redactions, which would have contained classified information of one sort or another. A collection of information is classified as the union of all individual classifications of information within it. E.g. the sentence 'the sky is blue, and the D-Day landings take place in Normandy' would have been classified Top Secret (or whatever) back in 1944, since the location of the landings would have been Top Secret (or whatever); it would not have been marked unclassified due to the statement that the sky is blue. This makes perfect sense. How could it be otherwise? The inclusion of your mailing address (public information) doesn't make your bank statement public information.

by zeveb 11y ago

tl;dr: it's a geeky reference to an issue which arose during testing (the testing team's joke was that the 'octopus harness' had taken over the world). A harmless instance of esprit de corps.

chris_wot 11y ago

Evidently such geeky awesomeness might destabilise the national security of the United States. I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". The patch, however, is not. Makes me wonder at what point a classification of secret or top secret will be entirely devalued. If this is a state secret, then anything could be a state secret.

bediger4000 11y ago
The classification system has been abused to the point of devaluing classified contents for decades. I think there's only one real reason for this: only a very few things are real state secrets, but there's a ton of budget overruns, bad ideas, career ending blunders, "favorite" vendors, vendors that hire close relatives, "independent" consultants, and similar mixes of incompetence and borderline embezzlement. It's far too easy to just classify some episode, and keep it from blowing up into a rebuke or termination for cause. There's little to be gained by carefully examining something and classifying it appropriate, and a lot to loose by under-classification.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  Just to underline this point, here's a very modern (incident in May, 2014, reporting apparently Jan 23, 2016) nuclear weapon mishap that was hidden: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-damage http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/air-force-nuclear-missile-... I will grant you that the Air Force tried double-speak and obfuscation to hide the incident rather than over-classification, but they did refuse a FOIA request about it and hid the incident from a Secretary of Defense appointed commission.
zeveb 11y ago
> I mean, the news article that explained the origin of the patch was deemed "Top Secret". No, it wasn't. The original article, as you can clearly read in the picture, was Secret. That's not absurd: see all those black boxes in the unclassified version of the article? Those are redactions, which would have contained classified information of one sort or another. A collection of information is classified as the union of all individual classifications of information within it. E.g. the sentence 'the sky is blue, and the D-Day landings take place in Normandy' would have been classified Top Secret (or whatever) back in 1944, since the location of the landings would have been Top Secret (or whatever); it would not have been marked unclassified due to the statement that the sky is blue. This makes perfect sense. How could it be otherwise? The inclusion of your mailing address (public information) doesn't make your bank statement public information.