Those of us over a certain age have regarded with bewilderment the now annual appearance of elves on shelves, not part of the Christmas of our youth. Now at long last, hidden in the depths of the Snowden leaks, the truth has been revealed.

Elves on shelves are , it seems, a symptom of a sea change in North Polar behavioral monitoring. Following the lead of the NSA and GCHQ, Santa , realizing that more and more of children’s behavior is online, has in recent years reallocated resources, including many senior elves in the Naughty or Nice Division, to SIGINT, Sleigh-Installed Gear for Interception of Network Traffic. Exploiting the TEMPEST vulnerability, high-altitude, single-reindeer sleighs monitor children’s internet behavior via leaked electromagnetic signals. A complex sleigh-based system of laser communication relays delivers data to the arctic undetected. What, you may ask, has this to do with elves on shelves?

The reassignment of senior elves to the SIGINT program has left traditional elf intelligence activities to junior staff. Not surprisingly, the stealth capability of new recruits isn’t as well developedas the more senior agents they have replaced. leading to a frightening number of early morning discoveries by surveilled children. At some point, North Pole PR gave up trying to explain the phenomenon and decided to have field agents hide in plain sight.