新闻链接：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MTY0NTYwMA==&mid=207768883&idx=1&sn=c76aeb20171044e4b9e12c3f74ed478b#rd
新闻时间：2015-07-23
新闻正文：
译者：Ghost II
校对：gsy
Ever since the second world war spies have pushed the development of computers
二战以来，正是情报行业推动着计算机的发展
Jul 18th 2015 | From the print edition
Intercept: The Secret History of Computers and Spies. By Gordon Corera. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 431 pages; £20.
IN 1996 John Perry Barlow, a computer activist who had once been a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, an attempt to capture the promise of openness and liberation that the young internet seemed to offer. “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel,” it began. “I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind…You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
1996年，曾担任“感恩死”乐队词作家的计算机激进分子约翰·佩里·巴洛撰写了《网络空间独立宣言》。当时，互联网正初露峥嵘，似乎带着开放与自由而来，而巴洛正是试图以此宣言来把握其中蕴含的机遇。“工业世界的政府们，你们这些令人生厌的铁血巨人们”，宣言这样写道，“我来自网络世界——一个崭新的心灵家园……在我们这里，你们并不受欢迎。在我们聚集的地方，你们没有主权。”
To anyone familiar with the history of the computers that make the internet possible, it was an ironic idea. The modern computer came of age during the second world war. Colossus, a lumbering electromechanical contraption widely regarded as the first modern computer, was assembled at Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain’s vast wartime code-breaking operation. It was a machine built to spy and to break open German secrets. These days, with worries about mass surveillance, digital espionage and computer crime filling the papers, the unsavoury heritage of the computer seems impossible to escape.
计算机的发展是互联网得以实现的基础，对于任何熟悉计算机历史的人来说，巴洛的宣言可谓一种讽刺。现代计算机于二战时期发展成熟。笨重的机电装置“巨人”是世所公认的第一台现代计算机，它就是在战时英国大规模解密行动总部——布莱切利园组装成型的，设计初衷是探查和破解德军机密。如今，对大规模监控、数字间谍活动和计算机犯罪的担忧常见诸报端，计算机的不良传统似乎难以逃避。
It is that heritage—together with its modern implications—that lie at the heart of “Intercept”, a new book by Gordon Corera, the BBC’s security correspondent. The message of this dual history of computers and electronic spying is that the two are inextricably linked, with developments in one constantly spurring advances in the other. Contrary to its modern mythmaking as a home of rugged, independent entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, Mr Corera reminds readers, owes its existence to the munificence of America’s soldiers and spies, whose endless appetite for more and faster chips spurred the technologies that would eventually bring cheap computers to everyone.
这项不良传统，以及计算机的现代意义，正是BBC安全通讯记者戈登·科雷拉新作《拦截进行时》的核心主题。纵观计算机和电子情报的发展历史，两者关系密切，相辅相成。科雷拉提醒读者，硅谷之所以存在，并不是现代硅谷神话里那些坚韧独立的创业家的功劳，而应归功于美国大兵和情报人员的慷慨善举：正是他们不断生产出更多芯片，并对其处理速度精益求精，才让计算机技术不断发展，最终让价廉的计算机普及千家万户。
These days, the computerised world presents spies across the globe with both a challenge and an opportunity. Unlike the paper kind, electronic data is weightless, and computers are riddled with security holes. That makes stealing secrets easier than ever. At the same time, computers are able to place the sort of cryptography with which Bletchley Park struggled in the second world war into the hands of everyone—including criminals, foreign spies and terrorists.
近年来，计算机的普及给全世界的情报活动带来了挑战，也带来了机遇：相比纸制文件，电子数据没有重量，计算机系统又漏洞重重——这使得机密窃取变得空前容易；但同时，计算机也将二战时期布莱切利园废寝忘食钻研的那些密码术拱手送给了所有人——包括外国间谍、犯罪分子以及恐怖分子。
Balancing the risks and rewards can sometimes be difficult. Mr Corera describes how Markus Wolf, the head of East Germany’s notorious Stasi (which, at one point, was thought to have files on about a third of the nation’s citizens), resisted the temptation to computerise his organisation’s miles of paper files. After all, pointed out Mr Wolf, the very convenience of computerised data made a big leak more likely. That point was spectacularly illustrated in 2013, when Edward Snowden walked out of America’s National Security Agency with tens of thousands of pilfered documents, a feat that would have been impossible in the pre-computer age.
风险与收益到底孰大孰小？这有时的确难以衡量。东德的斯塔西国家安全局一向声名不佳，据传拥有全国三分之一人口的机密档案。在本书中，科雷拉描述了斯塔西负责人马库斯·沃尔夫是如何抵御住诱惑，没有将该机构众多纸质档案电子化的。沃尔夫认为，电子数据省事的同时，毕竟还是增加了泄密风险。2013年，爱德华·斯诺登将美国国家安全局数以千万的窃听文件公诸于世，这一事件可谓沃尔夫观点的生动注解。在计算机普及之前的年代，这样的壮举委实不可思议。
Mr Corera has been given plenty of access to Western intelligence agencies, and he describes their dilemmas with sympathy. Monitoring the internet for suspicious behaviour may help forestall a terrorist attack, they point out, and arguments about privacy can seem abstract and unreal after such attacks succeed. At the same time the author does not shy away from the implications of granting the spies ever more power to surveil. Technology has made practical the kind of mass surveillance that would have turned Mr Wolf green with envy. In the West, at least, such powers are held in check by laws governing how the agencies behave. But the temptation to go further, to trade a little more privacy for a little more security, is always present.
科雷拉得到了充足的权限来近距离接触西方情报机构，他在书中对情报机构面临的困境详加描写，并报以同情。情报机构的观点是，在互联网上监控可疑行为对防范恐怖袭击可能大有裨益。而且，一旦袭击成功，再谈什么隐私未免显得不切实际。但与此同时，科雷拉也并不回避授予情报机构更多监控权限可能造成的不良影响。技术进步已经让大规模监控成为可能（程度之大甚至能让沃尔夫先生眼红），至少就西方来说，情报机构的监控方式倒还有法律来约束。但是，再越界一点、再牺牲一点隐私来换多一份安全的诱惑永远在前方招手。
At the same time, the ability to conduct such mass surveillance is no longer confined to nation-states. The internet’s biggest companies—such as Facebook and Google—have put a corporate twist on mass surveillance. The price for their services is collecting up users’ data: detailed lists of their preferences, habits, opinions and life histories, all packaged up and sold to advertisers to help them target commercial products.
此外，实施这样大规模监控的能力已不再局限于国家政府之手。诸如脸书和谷歌这样的互联网巨头已经开始在大规模监控上展开合作。使用其服务是有代价的：他们会收集用户数据（包括个人偏好、行为习惯、思想观点和生活轨迹等的详细信息），并将其打包贩卖给广告商，以便其有针对性地投放商品广告。
The book’s main message, though, is that computers have automated espionage, and made it cheap and easy. Spying on someone used to be hard, labour-intensive work. Tails had to be set, hidden microphones planted, post intercepted and steamed open. These days a person’s laptop and smartphone broadcasts their life across the internet, pre-packaged into a form that other computers can digest, analyse and correlate. Never mind all those cold-war thrillers set in 1970s Berlin. The true golden age of spying and surveillance—whether carried out by states or, increasingly, by companies—is now.
尽管有如前所述的诸多风险，本书的主旨还是在于：计算机已经让间谍活动实现了自动化，从而节约成本，更易实现。在过去，对人实施监控是一项费人费力的工作：要安排盯梢，要偷偷植入麦克风，要拦截往来信件，还要小心翼翼地用蒸汽熏开信封以便复原。而如今，笔记本电脑和智能手机可以将一个人的生活发布到网上，这些信息被打包成特定形式，其他计算机可以对其处理、分析并挖掘出其中相关性。忘记那些发生在上世纪70年代柏林的冷战惊悚片吧！对于情报窃取和监控活动来说（不论是出自国家还是日渐增多的企业），真正的黄金时代——正是现在。
