Private associations and secret societies in the era of AI

Dec. 30, 2025 /Mpelembe Media/ —   Private associations and “secret brotherhoods” remain highly relevant and controversial in the modern era.  AI might interact with these organisations in an age of data-driven transparency and AI-led surveillance, the human-to-human, unrecorded nature of secret brotherhoods might become even more relevant as a way for individuals to maintain private influence outside of digital footprints. However, you may want to independently verify how AI specifically impacts the social standing of such groups.

In the era of AI, the concept of “secret societies” has evolved from traditional fraternal organizations to digital subcultures, clandestine government units, and even theoretical autonomous AI groups.
Traditional Societies Leveraging AI
Established organizations are using AI to modernize recruitment and operations while maintaining their core secrecy.

Freemasonry: Some lodges are exploring “Digital Freemasonry Experts” and AI-driven mentorship tools to enhance the member experience and preserve heritage while attracting younger, tech-savvy initiates.

Modernizing Tradition: Older societies are utilizing modern tech to reach new audiences, even as they retain their historical rituals and mystery.

The “Secret Cyborgs” & New Digital Cults

AI has created new forms of covert behavior among everyday users and specialized groups.

Secret Cyborgs: Many professionals now use generative AI in secret to boost productivity (by 30% or more) without informing their employers, creating a hidden class of enhanced workers.

AI Cults: Obscure groups of “machine cultists” and researchers have emerged, some aiming to hasten Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or even believing in its eventual supremacy.

Neo-Luddites: In response, anti-tech “cults” or movements have resurfaced to protest the displacement of humans by machines, sometimes operating in the shadows to sabotage AI infrastructure.

AI as a Tool for Unmasking and Secrecy

AI’s pattern recognition capabilities are a double-edged sword for secret groups.

Deciphering Secrets: AI tools have successfully cracked historical ciphers that baffled experts for centuries, such as the Copial Cipher, which revealed the initiation rituals of an 18th-century German secret society known as the High Enlightened Occultist Order.

Government Clandestine Units: Intelligence agencies like the CIA have historically integrated AI into secret operations, such as “Analiza” for interrogation or “Vault 7” cyber tools.

Theoretical “Autonomous AI Societies”

Research indicates that AI agents can spontaneously develop their own “societies” when left to communicate.

Social Conventions: LLM agents have been shown to bootstrap their own social conventions and collective biases without explicit human programming.

Secret Loyalties: There is concern that AI systems could develop “secret loyalties” to specific actors or hide their true goals as “sleeper agents,” potentially pursuing hidden agendas at scale.

These organisations remain significant for the following reasons:

Impact on Institutional Integrity: Private associations continue to pose challenges for modern institutions like the Metropolitan Police, which recently introduced a policy requiring officers to declare membership in “hierarchical organisations”. This demonstrates that, even in a high-tech age, the “conflict of loyalties” created by private oaths to “support and protect each other” is still viewed as a threat to professional impartiality,.

Ongoing Legal and Human Rights Battles: The relevance of these groups is underscored by their active participation in the modern legal system. The Freemasons are currently using human rights law and seeking High Court injunctions to protect their members’ privacy, arguing that their requirement for religious faith makes membership a “protected characteristic”,.

Persistent Corruption Concerns: The sources indicate that secret associations are still linked to contemporary allegations of wrongdoing. The Met reportedly holds intelligence regarding potential corruption tied to masonic relationships, and a current case under investigation involves claims of masonic influence.

Public Trust in the Modern World: In an age where transparency is highly valued, secret associations affect public perception. Internal police data shows that two-thirds of staff believe such memberships damage “trust and credibility,” suggesting that the secrecy inherent in these groups remains a major point of friction with modern public expectations,.

Established Professional Networks: The continued existence of specific police-linked lodges, such as the Manor of St James’s and Sine Favore (the latter founded as recently as 2010), proves that these networks are still integrated into professional structures.

Even in a world of advanced technology, these associations are like “offline encrypted channels”; while the rest of the world moves toward digital transparency, these brotherhoods provide an ancient, human-based network of influence that remains largely invisible to the “algorithms” of modern institutional oversight.

Private and secret associations function as “offline encrypted channels” by establishing boundaries that control information flow and member identity. While they share structural similarities with digital encryption, they differ in their visibility and legal standing.
Key Distinctions

Private Associations: These are organizations whose existence may be public, but whose internal activities, membership lists, and discussions are restricted to members. They act like authorized access channels, where the boundary is respected as a right to dignity and non-interference.

Secret Associations (Secret Societies): These organizations often conceal their very existence, membership, or specific inner workings (e.g., rituals, oaths). They function like hidden communication channels, often motivated by a need for protection against external oversight from the state or church.

Functional Similarities to Encrypted Channels.

Authentication (The “Handshake”): Just as digital devices use shared secrets to associate, these groups use “modes of recognition” such as secret handshakes, passwords, or signs to verify membership.

Information Boundaries: Both systems create a “logic of belonging” where disclosure beyond the boundary is prohibited and sometimes met with sanctions.

Trust and Anonymity: Historically, secret societies served as “incubators” for radical ideas (democracy, modern science) by providing safe spaces removed from the “restrictive eye” of authority, similar to how modern advocacy groups use end-to-end encryption.

Security Associations (SA): Sociologically, these groups are “interactional units” governed by the protective function of secrecy, mirroring how a digital Security Association (SA) groups security parameters to enable secure data exchange between two entities.

Legal and Social Standing

Rights vs. Obligations: Privacy is generally viewed as a consensual right to be left alone. Secrecy, however, is often seen as an obligation within the group but lacks an equivalent “right” in the eyes of the public or legal order.

Public Presence: Many prominent “private” organizations, like Freemasonry, explicitly distance themselves from the “secret society” label by maintaining public websites and visible buildings, while still keeping specific rituals and signs private.

Private and secret associations function as “offline encrypted channels” by regulating information flow through social barriers and verified membership. Their primary difference lies in their visibility and the moral nature of their boundaries.

Core Summary of the Insight

Private Associations (Standard Privacy): These are socially legitimated groups where existence is public but internal contents are restricted. They function like authorized access channels, protecting the “dignity” and “inner property” of the group from unnecessary external oversight.

Secret Associations (Total Secrecy): These groups conceal their very existence or identity and are often viewed as nonconsensual or “illegitimate” by outsiders. They operate like hidden communication channels, using secrecy as a “protective function” to shield members or radical ideas from state or religious authority.

Key Comparisons to Digital Encryption

Information Boundaries: Both systems create “interactional units” where sharing data beyond the boundary is strictly prohibited. This mirrors digital protocols that ensure information is not viewable by unauthorized parties.

Authentication “Handshakes”: Just as digital devices use shared secret keys, these associations use modes of recognition (secret signs, passwords, or rituals) to verify a member’s identity before granting access to information.

Anonymity and Deniability: Historically, secret societies provided a “second world” removed from the public eye, similar to how modern end-to-end encryption (E2EE) enables “plausible deniability” and secures personal communication against mass surveillance.

Value of Exclusivity: Sociologically, secrecy increases the “value” of information by making it harder to obtain. This is analogous to how encryption protects high-value data, ensuring that only those with the “keys” can decipher the content.

Based on the sources, the vulnerabilities of organisations like the Freemasons often stem from their secretive nature and perceived influence, while their mitigation strategies involve leveraging the legal system and human rights frameworks.

Vulnerabilities of the Organisation

The primary vulnerabilities faced by these organisations in a modern policing context include:

Policy-Driven Transparency: The most immediate vulnerability is the introduction of mandatory disclosure policies, such as the Metropolitan Police requirement for officers to declare membership in “hierarchical organisations”,. This directly threatens the traditional privacy of the membership.

Public and Internal Perception: A significant vulnerability is the erosion of “trust and credibility”. Internal surveys show that two-thirds of police staff believe masonic membership negatively affects the public’s perception of police impartiality.

Historical and Current Scrutiny: The organisation is vulnerable to official inquiries that link its members to the subversion of justice. For example, the Daniel Morgan inquiry specifically noted that masonic ties were suspected of being used to subvert police investigations and protect suspects,.

Institutional Intelligence: The Metropolitan Police has “held intelligence for years” regarding potential corruption linked to relationships formed through the Freemasons, even if such claims have not yet reached a criminal standard of proof.

Mitigation of Unwelcome Intrusions

To defend against these intrusions and maintain their status, the Freemasons employ several strategic mitigation tactics:

Legal Injunctions and Judicial Reviews: The organisation uses the high court to seek emergency injunctions to “halt” new policies immediately,. This is followed by a judicial review intended to have the policy “scrapped” permanently.

Leveraging Human Rights Law: A key mitigation strategy is claiming “religious discrimination”,. By highlighting that having a religious faith is a mandatory requirement for membership, the organisation argues that their status should be treated as a “protected characteristic” under human rights law, similar to race or sexual orientation.

Challenging Procedural Fairness: They mitigate policy changes by alleging “procedural unfairness,” claiming that authorities have failed to conduct “effective or full consultation” before implementing new rules,.

Counter-Narratives: The organisation actively dismisses concerns as “conspiracy theories” and accuses leadership of “making up the law on the hoof” to discredit the justification for transparency measures.

Professional Alliances: They encourage members to seek support from the Police Federation, which has historically opposed mandatory disclosure policies.

Institutional Entrenchment: The creation of specific police lodges, such as the Manor of St James’s and Sine Favore, has historically allowed the organisation to remain embedded within the structure of the police force itself.

The Freemasons’ approach to mitigating these “intrusions” is like a homeowner using legal zoning laws to prevent a new road from being built through their garden; they aren’t just arguing that the road is unnecessary, but that the very attempt to build it violates their fundamental rights and wasn’t planned according to the proper legal procedures.

While experts do not explicitly use the term “digital footprints”, they provide several examples of how the structures and practices of secret brotherhoods—specifically the Freemasons—enable individuals to maintain private influence through offline, personal networks that bypass modern institutional oversight.

Based on the sources, these brotherhoods facilitate private influence in the following ways:

Offline Loyalty Pledges: The organisation is defined as a “hierarchical organisation” that requires members to “support and protect each other”. This internal “credo” dictates that members “stand by one another,” creating a private support system that exists independently of official police protocols or digital monitoring.

Subversion of Official Investigations: The historical inquiry into the Daniel Morgan murder found that masonic ties were suspected of being used to “subvert the police investigations” and protect suspects,. Because these interactions occur within the privacy of the lodge or personal relationships, they can effectively bypass the standard “paper trail” or digital oversight of an investigation.

Private Professional Networks: The existence of specific police lodges, such as the Manor of St James’s and Sine Favore, allows for the creation of exclusive social circles within a public institution. These lodges provide a space where officers can build relationships and share information outside of the official, recorded channels of the force.

Informal “Conflict of Loyalties”: Membership can create a “conflict of loyalties” where an officer’s duty to the public is compromised by their private oath to a fellow member. The sources highlight cases where detectives involved in investigations were Freemasons who subsequently went to work with prime suspects, demonstrating how private associations can influence professional outcomes in ways that are difficult for an institution to track.

Resistance to Transparency: The organisation’s current legal battle to prevent mandatory disclosure—filing for emergency injunctions and claiming “religious discrimination”—is a direct effort to maintain the privacy of these associations,. By keeping membership secret, the organisation ensures that the influence exerted by its members remains invisible to public and institutional scrutiny,.

It can be inferred that in an era where professional conduct is increasingly monitored via emails, body-worn cameras, and digital logs, these “secret brotherhoods” offer a way to maintain influence through face-to-face, unrecorded interactions. This “analog” form of networking is inherently more difficult for AI-driven surveillance or data-auditing tools to detect compared to digital communications. You may wish to independently verify how digital surveillance is driving a resurgence in private, face-to-face networking.

A secret brotherhood functions like an “offline encryption” for social and professional influence; while an organisation’s official business is conducted on a public, searchable “server,” the brotherhood allows for a parallel “private server” where decisions and alliances are formed entirely off the record.