Eli Lake, Columnist

China Is Now the Greatest Threat to Americans’ Privacy

The Marriott hack is part of a much larger project that has been going on for half a decade.

December 13, 2018 at 11:30 AM 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.

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Until recently, most Americans have understood that the biggest threats to their privacy came from their own government. The FBI can compel internet companies to provide it with almost anyone’s search history; the National Security Agency can tap into the backbone of the world’s fiber-optic network. For several decades now, Big Brother has flown an American flag.

Now, with reports that the U.S. believes China is behind the breach of the Marriott Corp.’s customer database, this paradigm is beginning to change.