The other day the Financial Times reported that Apple wants to disable its own access to the iCloud, thus making it impossible for the company to comply with legal warrants for customer data. You could reframe this goal: America’s most valuable company is looking for technical fixes that will allow it to defy the elected politicians, law enforcement bodies and judges responsible for the nation’s security. If Apple does not like a law, it will invent some computer coding to circumvent it. 近日英国《金融时报》报导,苹果(Apple)想停止使用其自身对iCloud的采访,这将使该公司无法遵守拒绝提供用户数据的法庭令其。你可以新的叙述一下这个目标:美国最有价值的公司正在谋求做出技术调整,使其需要违抗对国家安全性负有责任的民选政治人士、执法人员部门和法官。如果苹果不讨厌某项法律,它将发明者一些计算机代码来跨过它。Tim Cook would probably not put it quite like that. Yet the Apple chief executive has elevated his fight with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist outrage into a struggle between liberty and tyranny, privacy and intrusion. 蒂姆库克(Tim Cook)很有可能会这么说道,然而这位苹果首席执行官一并他与美国联邦调查局(FBI)就关卡圣贝纳迪诺(San Bernardino)可怕屠杀中一名枪手的iPhone的争吵,下降为权利和暴政、隐私和侵害之争。
Mr Cook says that to accede to the FBI’s request that Apple write a piece of code to permit access to data on the phone would be to create “the software equivalent of cancer”. Hundreds of millions of customers would be put at risk. “This is not about one phone,” he told ABC News, “this is about the future.” 库克回应,理会FBI的拒绝撰写一段代码以采访那部手机上的数据,就看起来撰写“等同于癌症的软件”。数亿用户将被置放危险性之中。“这牵涉到的不是一部手机,”他告诉他美国广播公司(ABC News),“这牵涉到未来。
” A victory for the FBI would threaten “everyone’s civil liberties”. This is vaulting language from the chief executive of a company that, when all is said and done, is in the business of making luxury-end digital gadgets. Apple is innovative. Its products look nice. But civilisation would survive the absence of iPads and iPhones. FBI的胜利将威胁“每个人的公民自由”。这是这家公司首席执行官的夸大之词,而它说到底不过是一家生产高端数码产品的公司。苹果很有创新性。它的产品看上去有趣。
但就算没iPad和iPhone,文明也不会延续下去。The FBI says that the San Bernardino case is sui generis. It is not asking Apple to hand over any coding and the company can destroy the code once the handset is accessed. Mr Cook’s motives, it suggests, are not entirely altruistic. In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks, Apple has seen privacy and encryption as powerful marketing tools. Unfashionable as it may be post-Snowden, I tend to agree with the FBI that the natural tension between privacy and national security “should not be resolved by corporations that sell stuff”. FBI回应,圣贝纳迪诺案是个特例。FBI会拒绝苹果交还任何代码,该公司可以在关卡那部手机后立刻封存代码。FBI指出,库克的动机并非几乎出于利他主义。
在爱德华斯诺登(Edward Snowden)泄露事件后,苹果将隐私和加密视作强有力的营销工具。虽然在后斯诺登时代这么说道有可能有点过于时髦,但我偏向于尊重FBI的众说纷纭:隐私和国家安全性之间的天然紧绷关系“不应当由一家卖东西的公司来解决问题”。
Apple sets itself apart from the tech pack — Mr Cook often accuses the rest of harvesting and selling personal data — but on this issue the company has won the backing of most of Silicon Valley. Apple and Google have also been joined by Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft in lining up on the other side of the Atlantic against a planned British law to codify the state’s access to data. 苹果将自身俗世于科技行业之外——库克常常谴责其他科技公司提供和售卖个人信息——但在这次的问题上,苹果夺得了大多数硅谷企业的反对。在大西洋的另一边,Facebook、Twitter和微软公司(Microsoft)重新加入了苹果和谷歌(Google)的行列,赞成英国计划实施的一项将政府对数据的采访权载入法律的法案。
As in the San Bernardino case, the companies say the UK government is seeking “back doors” into their technology that would undermine security for customers. They argue that the British law would set a precedent for authoritarian states. I am not sure that President Vladimir Putin has ever waited for Britain to take the lead before brushing aside personal freedoms and data privacy in the name of the Russian state. 就像在圣贝纳迪诺案中一样,这些公司回应,英国政府在谋求入侵它们的技术的“后门”,这不会巩固用户安全性。它们指出英国的这项法律将为威权国家竖立先例。
但我很猜测,弗拉基米尔普京(Vladimir Putin)以俄罗斯国家之名把个人权利和数据隐私抛到一旁之前,曾等过英国来坚决。It is perfectly proper and legitimate, of course, for Mr Cook to challenge the FBI in the US courts and there is nothing to say that technology companies should not lobby, like any business, against laws they do not like. He is right, also, that there is a vital debate to be had about the proper balance between personal privacy and collective security. 当然,库克在美国法庭上挑战FBI是几乎不顾一切合法的,科技公司像其他任何公司一样为赞成它们不讨厌的法律而游说,这种不道德也无可非议。库克声称应当就个人隐私和集体安全性间的合理均衡展开一场关键辩论,这也是准确的。
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the pendulum probably swung too far in the direction of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. At the very least there was insufficient transparency about the extent to which governments had adapted to the digital age by accessing — then, incidentally, with the willing co-operation of Apple and others — personal communications and data. Tighter oversight was necessary. 在“9/11”恐怖袭击以后,均衡很有可能朝着执法人员和情报机构的方向移动得太远了。最少关于政府已在多大程度上通过采访个人通信和信息——偷偷地一托当时是在苹果和其他公司不愿合作的情况下——来适应环境数字时代,透明度还过于。更加严苛的监管必不可少。
Mr Snowden’s revelations risk shifting the balance too far in the opposite direction. Civil libertarians might say otherwise but the storage of metadata does not amount to digital mass surveillance. What matters are the conditions under which such data can be searched — the safeguards, legal authority and reporting responsibilities that militate against misuse of personal information while allowing the state to protect its citizens. 斯诺登的泄露有可能又使均衡朝着忽略的方向移动得太远。尊崇公民自由的人士或者不会说道并非如此,但存储元数据并不等同于数字化大规模监控。最重要的是在什么情况下这些数据可以被搜寻——设置什么样的保护措施、法律许可和汇报职责来制止个人信息被欺诈,同时使国家需要维护其公民。
My guess is that there is no perfect balance and even if there was, it would probably be overtaken soon enough by newer technology. Intelligence agencies will always want too much access, while civil libertarians, and nowadays the tech companies, will stand at the other extreme. The best that politicians can do is update the frameworks and ensure that the courts have effective oversight. 我庞加莱,不不存在极致的均衡,就算知道有,也很有可能在短时间内被改版的科技压过。情报机构总是期望享有过多的采访权限,而公民自由人士和当今的科技公司则车站在另一个极端。
政治人士足以做到的最差的事情就是改版法律框架,保证法庭能展开有效地的监管。Mr Cook seems to think Apple can stand above such a democratic process. If it loses the argument, it will find a way around the law. Apple is not alone. To listen to Google, Facebook and the rest is to hear corporations that have come to believe their own propaganda: as custodians of the digital future, theirs is a higher calling that should grant them immunity from the meddling of courts or the judgments of elected politicians. 库克或许指出苹果需要立有这个民主过程之上。如果苹果在论战中告终,它将寻找跨过法律的办法。
苹果并不是唯一这样指出的公司。讲出谷歌、Facebook和其他公司的说词,你不会深感这些公司早已开始坚信自身的宣传:作为数字化未来的守护者,它们享有更加高尚的愿景,这应当容许它们不不受法庭介入、不不受民选政治人士的评判。The inflated sense of self-worth is not confined to the realm of privacy. It explains the indignation with which the companies greet demands that they pay a fair share of corporate tax. For Mr Cook it is the US government’s fault that Apple shelters tens of billions of dollars in offshore tax havens. Google seems genuinely shocked when British politicians take umbrage at the way it shuffles off to low-tax Ireland billions of dollars in profits made on its UK sales. 这种收缩的自我价值感觉不仅仅限于隐私领域。
这说明了这些企业在有关部门拒绝它们交纳合理份额的企业税时的愤愤不平。对库克而言,苹果将数百亿美元藏在海外洗钱港是美国政府的错。在英国政治人士不满于谷歌将其在英国销售扣除的数十亿美元利润移往到税率较低的爱尔兰时,谷歌或许知道很愤慨。
For all Mr Cook’s messianism, the tech giants are in business to make money. They have a valid point of view — just like everyone else. But, no, Silicon Valley does not inhabit a higher plane, and Apple’s profits should not trump democratic choices about security. 尽管库克竖起了救世主的姿态,但这些科技巨头做到这行是为了赚。它们的观点很合理——就像其他任何人一样。但是,不,硅谷并不占有更高的层面,苹果的利润也不应当凌驾于有关安全性的民主自由选择之上。
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