NOS

The Memory Hole

Information Awareness Office Website Deletes Its Logo

The disappeared logo

The government's Information Awareness Office--you know, the Defense agency that's running the Total Information Awareness Program, the huge database that will track everything about everyone in the US and beyond, helmed by convicted felon John Poindexter--keeps getting more shy. First, the IAO took down the biographies of its senior staff. (The Memory Hole has mirrored them here.)

Now, the IAO has removed its eye-death-ray logo, which was denounced far and wide as being Orwellian, Masonic, and just plain creepy as hell.

Above, we've archived the logo's large version. Below, we've archived the IAO's banner, which used to incorporate the logo but is now quite plain. (The banner also used to contain the IAO's slogan, "Scienta est potentia," which is Latin for, "Knowledge is power.")

The original TIA page (with logo-banner)

The current TIA page (with plain banner)

Thanks to Morgan Woodson for alerting me.

The public clamor over the logo got so bad that DARPA issued a notice of retraction in February of 2003, and the short-lived logo was abandoned altogether. [John Paul Jones, 2004]

"Does the Brotherhood exist?" "That Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is yes or no. As long as you live, it will be a riddle in your mind." -- 1984 by George Orwell