Eli Lake, Columnist

An NSA Breach and the New Hobbesian War on Our Privacy

We feared the government, but now we face the real threat: a surveillance war of all against all.

November 13, 2017 at 8:16 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

1510603572_GettyImages-90339752 — Photographer: Susie Adams, via Getty Images

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Since the former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden's disclosures began showing up in the Washington Post and the Guardian, the political debate over the American surveillance state has been stuck in the 20th century.

The public has feared a secretive, all-seeing eye, a vast bureaucracy that could peer into our online lives and track the numbers our smartphones dialed. Privacy as we knew it was dead. The era of Big Brother was here.