Governments have always wanted to keep tabs on their people; they just lacked the means to do so. Napoleon issued what became the first government IDs back in 1803, and the concept soon spread to other nations. Later in 1936, the US government issued its first Social Security cards, which actually said, “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION”. That didn’t last very long, and now the kine can’t hold a job without one. ESCHELON has been around since the ‘60s, its existence verified in numerous leaks, congressional hearings, and even by Snowden in 2015. Once FIRSTLIGHT got its first piece of funding, updating the codeword scrubbers to look for words like, “Camarilla” and “Primogen” probably took less than a few minutes. Just last year, the TSA introduced a pilot program for facial scanning for airline passengers. How much longer do you think it’s going to be “optional”?

Think about it for a minute: in a world moving closer and closer to a surveillance state, can we as kindred continue to ignore the march of technology? We’ve already had one brush with death. When the Second Inquisition came, all the higher ups could think of was to put their heads in the sand. Admittedly, keeping sensitive conversations offline and switching to burners was good OPSEC, but we should have done it three decades ago. Now it’s bought us a few years at most.