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互联网走进政府信息管制的包围圈

所属教程:科学前沿

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2017年01月23日

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There’s a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating.

一种新的数字审查形式正在席卷全球,它可能是某种灾难性过程的开始。

In the last few weeks, the Chinese government compelled Apple to remove New York Times apps from the Chinese version of the App Store. Then the Russian government had Apple and Google pull the app for LinkedIn, the professional social network, after the network declined to relocate its data on Russian citizens to servers in that country. Finally, last week, a Chinese regulator asked app stores operating in the country to register with the government, an apparent precursor to wider restrictions on app marketplaces.

在过去几周里,中国政府迫使苹果公司(Apple)把《纽约时报》的应用程序从它的应用程序中国区商店中移除。之后,在职业社交网络领英(LinkedIn)拒绝把俄罗斯公民的数据转移到该国的服务器上之后,俄罗斯政府迫使苹果和谷歌移除了该应用程序。最后,中国的一个监管机构上周要求在该国运营的应用程序商店向政府注册,这显然是对应用程序市场进行更广泛限制的一个前兆。

These moves may sound incremental, and perhaps not immediately alarming. China has been restricting the web forever, and Russia is no bastion of free speech. So what’s so dangerous about blocking apps?

这些措施可能听起来是一点一滴、徐徐而来的,也许不会马上引起人们的警觉。中国一直在限制网络,俄罗斯从来都不是自由言论的堡垒。所以,封锁应用程序为什么就那么危险呢?

Here’s the thing: It’s a more effective form of censorship.

问题在于:它是一种更有效的审查形式。

Blocking a website is like trying to stop lots of trucks from delivering a banned book; it requires an infrastructure of technical tools (things like China’s “Great Firewall”) and enterprising users can often find a way around it. Banning an app from an app store, by contrast, is like shutting down the printing press before the book is ever published. If the app isn’t in a country’s app store, it effectively doesn’t exist. The censorship is nearly total and inescapable.

封锁一个网站就像是努力阻止很多卡车运送一部禁书,它需要一些技术领域的基础设施(比如中国的“防火长城”[Great Firewall]) ,胆大心细的用户往往能找到一个方法绕开它。相比之下,禁用应用程序商店里的一个应用程序就像是在书还没印出来之前关掉了印刷机。如果这个应用程序不在一个国家的应用程序商店里,那它就相当于不存在。这种审查方式几乎是彻底且无法逃避的。

But that’s not the end of this story. The banning of apps highlights a deeper flaw in our modern communications architecture: It’s the centralization of information, stupid.

但这还不是最终的结局。应用程序的禁用突显出现代通讯架构的一个更深层次的缺陷:简而言之,信息集中化。

“I think the app store censorship issue is one layer of ice on the surface of the iceberg above the waterline,” said Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School and a leader in the free software movement of activists who have long been warning about the dangers of centrally managed, commercial software.

“我认为,对应用程序商店的审查是在水面以上的冰山表面再加上一层冰,”哥伦比亚大学法学院(Columbia Law School)教授、自由软件运动领导人埃本·莫哥伦(Eben Moglen)说。该运动长期以来一直在警告集中控制的商业软件的危险性。

For more than a decade, we users of digital devices have actively championed an online infrastructure that now looks uniquely vulnerable to the sanctions of despots and others who seek to control information. We flocked to smartphones, app stores, social networks and cloud storage. Publishers like The New York Times are investing in apps and content posted to social networks instead of the comparatively open World Wide Web. Some startups now rely exclusively on apps; Snapchat, for instance, exists only as a mobile app.

十多年来,我们这些数字设备的用户一直积极支持在线基础设施构建,但是现在看来,它极易受制于专制者和其他企图控制信息的人。我们纷纷使用智能手机、应用程序商店、社交网络和云储存。《纽约时报》等出版商正在应用程序以及社交网络发布内容方面进行投资,而不是在相对开放的万维网(World Wide Web)上。有些初创公司现在完全依赖于应用程序,比如Snapchat就仅以手机应用程序的形式存在。

Compared to older forms of distributing software, apps downloaded from app stores are more convenient for users and often more secure from malware, and they can be more lucrative for creators. But like so much else online now, they risk feeding into mechanisms of central control. In most countries, the Apple and Google app stores are the only places to find apps for devices running their respective operating systems (there are more choices for Android app stores in China, where Google does not offer its store).

与以往的软件发行形式相比,从应用程序商店下载应用程序更便捷,往往也更安全,可以避免下载恶意软件,对创造者来说,它们也更有利可图。但是,和现在网上的很多其他东西一样,它们有可能被卷入集中控制机制。在大部分国家,在使用苹果和谷歌各自操作系统的电子设备上,它们的应用程序商店是唯一能找到应用程序的地方(中国的安卓系统有更多应用程序商店,因为谷歌没在那里开设自己的商店)。

Just about all of the internet’s economic value is instead connected to two very specific somewheres: the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, the homes of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook, the four monstrously large companies that own the internet’s central information platforms. As these companies began to build ever-larger empires online, they have evolved into convenient choke points — the very points of control that the internet had been designed to eliminate.

互联网的几乎所有经济价值都与两个具体的地方有联系:旧金山湾区和西雅图,它们是苹果、亚马逊(Amazon)、谷歌和Facebook的总部所在地,这四个异常庞大的公司拥有互联网的中央信息平台。随着这些公司开始在网上建立更庞大的帝国,它们已演变成极易受控的要津,而这些正是互联网最初设计时想要消除的控制点。

Like all companies, online companies must offer some level of deference to governments. They obey local and national laws, court orders and national security authorities, and bend to other, less transparent means of coercion. They can fight governments — as Apple did when it battled the FBI over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone last year — but they often must pick their battles and balance their interests. Apple makes a significant fraction of its profits from China. Can it really risk all those billions to protect a handful of apps?

和所有的公司一样,在线公司必须对政府表示一定程度的尊重。它们要遵守地方和国家法律、法院命令以及国家安全机构的指令,并屈从于其他一些不太明显的胁迫。他们可以与政府抗争——比如去年,苹果公司拒绝为联邦调查局(FBI)解锁一名恐怖分子的iPhone——但他们往往必须对进行哪些对抗予以选择,以实现利益平衡。苹果的很大一部分利润来自中国。它真的愿意为了保护少数几个应用程序而承担损失数十亿美元的风险吗?

Apple offered this statement in response to my queries on how it decides to take down apps: “For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.” Google declined to comment.

我向苹果询问它在移除应用程序方面如何做决定时,它给出了这项声明:“《纽约时报》的应用程序不被允许向中国的大部分用户展示内容已有一段时间,我们被告知,该应用程序违反地方法规。所以,该应用程序必须从应用程序中国区商店下架。如果情况发生变化,该商店将再次提供《纽约时报》的应用程序,以供在中国下载。”谷歌拒绝作出评论。

But Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights activist organization, said the internet giants were not without leverage in this fight.

数字权利活动团体电子前沿基金会(Electronic Frontier Foundation)的网络安全主管伊娃·加尔佩林(EvaGalperin)表示,在这场斗争中,这些互联网巨头并非没有砝码。

“The flip side of that is, is China going to block the entire Apple App Store over a single app?” she asked. Interestingly, the internet giants’ hold on every aspect of online life works toward their advantage in battling governments.

“另一个方面是,中国真的会为了一个应用程序而封锁整个苹果应用程序商店吗?”她问道。有趣的是,这些互联网巨头对网络生活各个方面的控制都让自己在与政府的对抗中更具优势。

“The bigger a company is, the bigger the risk that blocking them will lead to riots in the streets because you have come between people and their pictures of cats,” Galperin said. “Those are the companies that governments are going to be more wary of blocking, and they should be the ones that stand up to government pressure. They have a special responsibility.”

“公司越大,封锁它们会导致街头骚乱的风险就越大,因为你挡在了人们和他们的猫的照片之间,”加尔佩林说。“政府在封锁这些公司时会更加谨慎,所以它们应该抵抗政府的压力。它们负有特殊的责任。”

Users and app developers who are now at risk of being censored also bear some responsibility. When I asked Moglen at Columbia about app bans, he was incensed that I didn’t recognize The New York Times’s own complicity in this story.

现在面临审查风险的用户和应用程序开发者也负有一定的责任。我对哥伦比亚大学的莫哥伦教授谈起应用程序禁用问题时,他非常愤怒地说,我没有意识到,在这个故事中,《纽约时报》也是共犯。

The Times, he argued, could have stuck with the old way of publishing news. The company could have declined to create a downloadable app and instead invested all of its engineering resources into making its news available on the web, anonymously. The Times could have refused to profile users for advertising purposes, or to have its articles hosted on Facebook, or to monitor what people read in order to recommend more articles to keep people engaged. In short, The Times could have refused to play the modern digital-publishing game. But like every other publisher, it went along.

他认为,时报本可以坚持传统的发布新闻的方式。本可以拒绝创造一个可以下载的应用程序,本可以把所有的工程技术资源投入到在网上匿名提供新闻上。时报本可以拒绝为了广告目的制作用户档案,本可以不把文章发布到Facebook上,本可以不为了推荐更多文章吸引读者而监视他们的阅读内容。简而言之,时报本可以拒绝参加现代数字出版游戏。但是,和所有其他出版者一样,它也加入了。

“What did you expect would happen?” Moglen said. “China didn’t have to build a Great Firewall to do this. You all offered them an opportunity to piggyback onto your disrespect for the privacy and integrity and autonomy of your readers and users.”

“你们原以为会发生什么?”莫哥伦说。“中国不用建防火长城就可以做到这一点。你们都给它们提供了一个机会,让它们可以利用你们对读者和用户的隐私、正直和自主权的不尊重。”

I don’t agree with Moglen that The Times disrespects its readers by offering a news app. (I think it’s a very nice app.) But he is right that a lot of people online walked blindly into the no-win position we are in now, where our only recourse against censorship might be the goodwill of a few giant corporations that control most of the internet.

我不赞同莫哥伦认为时报提供新闻应用程序是对读者的不尊重这个观点(我认为它是一个非常好的应用程序)。但有一点他说对了:网上的很多人无意中走进了我们目前所在的无望取胜的位置,我们对抗审查制度的唯一资源可能就是少数几个控制互联网大部分资源的大公司的善意。

There has to be some other way. Let’s maybe work on finding it.

一定有什么其他方式。也许让我们一起来寻找吧。
 


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