大數據時代的隱私 we must rein in the electronic gossips

Imagine being talked about behind your back. Now picture that conversation taking place covertly in your own sitting room, with you unable to hear it.

想象一下有人在你背後談論你。現在設想一下，這樣的談話就悄悄發生在你家客廳裏，而你卻無法聽到。

That is the modus operandi of SilverPush, an Indian start-up that embeds inaudible sounds in television advertisements. As the advert plays, a high-frequency signal is emitted that can be picked up by a mobile or other device installed with an app containing SilverPush software. This “pairing” — currently targeted at Indian consumers — also identifies users’ other nearby devices and allows the company to monitor what they do across those. All without consumers hearing a thing.

這就是印度創業企業SilverPush的做法，該公司在電視廣告裏嵌入聽不到的聲音。廣告播放時，會發出一種高頻信號，安裝有內置SilverPush軟件的應用的手機或其他設備可接收到這種信號。這種“配對”——目前是針對印度消費者的——也會識別出用戶附近的其他設備，讓該公司得以監控他們在這些設備上做些什麼。這一切都在消費者無知無覺的情況下發生。

This “cross-device tracking technology”, being explored by other companies including Adobe, is an emblem of a new era with which all of us — governments, companies, charities and consumers — will have to contend.

這種“跨設備跟蹤技術”——包括Adobe在內的其他公司也在探索此技術——標誌着一個新時代的來臨。這個新時代是所有人——政府、公司、慈善機構和消費者——將不得不應對的。

Last month, the Royal Statistical Society hosted a conference at Windsor castle to ponder the challenges of Big Data — an overused, underexplained term for both the flood of information churned out by our devices and the potential for this flood to be organised into revelatory and predictive rivers of knowledge.

不久前，英國皇家統計學會(Royal Statistical Society)在溫莎(Windsor)城堡召開了一次大會，思考大數據帶來的挑戰。大數據是一個被濫用、內涵解釋欠清楚的術語，既指我們的設備產生的海量信息流，也指把這些信息整理爲分門別類的一股股具有揭示性和預見性的信息流的潛力。

The setting was apt: the ethics and governance surrounding the growing use of data are a right royal mess. Public discussion about how these vast quantities of information should be collected, stored, cross-referenced and exploited is urgently needed. There is excitement about how it might revolutionise healthcare — during outbreaks of disease, for example, search data can be mined for the greater good. Today, however, public engagement largely amounts to public outcry when things go wrong.

這次大會召開得正是時候：圍繞日益增加的數據使用的倫理和治理可謂一團糟。目前迫切需要就這些海量數據應當如何收集、存儲、相互參照和利用展開公衆討論。有人對大數據可能催生醫療革命感到興奮：比如說，在疾病爆發時，可以爲了更高的利益挖掘搜索數據。然而，如今，當出現糟糕情況時，公衆討論很大程度上變成公衆的強烈聲討。

The extent to which tech shapes our lives — the average British adult spends more than 20 hours a week online, according to a report by UK media regulator Ofcom — means our behaviour, habits, desires and aspirations can be revealed by our swipes and keystrokes.

英國媒體監管機構英國通信辦公室(Ofcom)的一份報告顯示，英國成年人平均每週在線時間超過20小時。科技對我們生活的巨大影響，意味着我們的行爲、習慣、慾望和抱負都可以通過觸摸屏和鍵盤操作顯露出來。

This has made analysis of online be a new Klondike. Personal data are like gold dust, and we surrender them every time we casually click “OK” to a website’s terms and conditions.

這使得對在線行爲的分析成爲一座新的金礦。個人數據就像金砂，每次我們隨意對一家網站的條款與條件點擊“確定”時，就把我們的個人數據交了出去。

And here is our first problem: most of us click unthinkingly (it is usually impenetrable legalese, anyhow). It is thus questionable whether we have given informed consent to all the ways in which our personal data are subsequently used. To demonstrate this, a security company set up a public WiFi spot in the City of London and inserted a “Herod clause” committing users to hand over their firstborn for eternity. Within a short period of time, several people unwittingly bartered away their offspring in return for a free connection.

這是我們面臨的第一個問題：我們中大多數人都是不假思索地點擊的（不過，條款與條件通常是難懂的法律措辭）。那麼，我們對自己的個人數據隨後被使用的各種情形是否行使了知情同意權，就成了疑問。爲了證明這一點，一家安全公司在倫敦金融城(City of London)設立了一個公共WiFi熱點，並嵌入一個“希律條款”(Herod Clause)，要求用戶承諾永遠放棄他們的第一個孩子。在很短時間內，就有不少人爲了免費上會兒網稀裏糊塗地放棄了自己的孩子。

Legal challenges aside, there is rarely independent scrutiny of what is a fair and reasonable relationship between an online company and its consumers. Facebookfell foul of this when it manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users for a psychology experiment. Users claimed they had been duped by the study, which found that those exposed to fewer positive news stories were more likely to write negative posts. The company retorted that consent had already been given. Approval last week of EU data protection rules permitting hefty fines for privacy breaches may prevent a repetition; consent will no longer be the elastic commodity it was.

除了法律挑戰，關於網絡公司及其消費者之間公平與恰當的關係應該是怎樣的，我們也很少進行過獨立的審視。Facebook在這一點上便曾引起衆怒，因爲它爲了做一個心理實驗，對近70萬用戶的動態消息動了手腳。用戶們聲稱，他們被那項研究給耍了，研究結果顯示，那些接收到更少積極消息的人更可能寫出消極的內容。Facebook反駁稱，他們已獲得了用戶的同意。不久前，歐盟通過了數據保護規則，新規允許對侵犯隱私的行爲處以高額罰款，這或許能阻止類似情況再次發生；用戶不再像以往那樣無論代價如何都只能被動同意了。

A second challenge arises from the so-called internet of things, when devices bypass humans and talk directly to one another. So my depleted smart fridge could automatically email the supermarket requesting replenishment. But it could also mean my gossiping gadgets become a network of electronic spies that can paint a richly detailed picture of my prandial and other proclivities, raising privacy concerns. Indeed, at a robotics conference last month, technologists identified the ability of robots to collect data, especially in private homes, as the single biggest ethical issue in that field.

第二個挑戰源自各種設備繞過人類、直接彼此對話的所謂物聯網。所以，我的智能冰箱在儲存消耗光了的時候可以自動給超市發電郵，要求補貨。但這也可以意味着，我的那些“八卦”的設備構成了一張電子間諜網，它可以繪製出一幅有關我的飲食與其他癖性的極其詳盡的圖畫，令人擔心隱私暴露。實際上，在不久前的一個機器人學大會上，技術專家們把機器人收集數據（尤其是在私人住所裏）的能力認定爲大數據領域最大的單個倫理問題。

Alongside the new EU rules on data protection, we need something softer: a body of experts and laypeople that can bring knowledge, wisdom and judgment to this fast-moving field. There is already a Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society in the US, comprising lawyers, philosophers and anthropologists.

除了歐盟新的數據保護規則外，我們也需要更軟性的方式：一個由專家和非專業人員構成的機構，爲這一快速發展的領域帶來知識、智慧和判斷力。眼下，美國已有了一個由律師、哲學家和人類學家組成的大數據、倫理與社會委員會(Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society)。

Europe should follow this example — because, as a stream of anecdotes at the Windsor conference revealed, companies and academics to be navigating this new data-rich world without a moral compass. In 2012 a Russian company created Girls Around Me, an app that pooled publicly available information to show the real-time locations and pictures of nearby women, without their consent; the app, a stalker’s dream, was withdrawn. High-tech rubbish bins in London’s Square Mile, which captured information from smartphones to track unwitting owners’ movements in order to target them with advertising, were ditched on grounds of creepiness.

歐洲應當仿效美國的做法，因爲正如溫莎大會上的一連串趣聞所顯示的那樣，公司和學術界人士在這個數據豐富的新世界航行時，似乎沒有帶上倫理指南針。2012年，一家俄羅斯公司推出了一款名爲“Girls Around Me”的應用(App)，可以彙集公開可見的信息，在不經使用者附近女性同意的情況下顯示她們的實時位置和照片。這款跟蹤騷擾者夢寐以求的應用被撤下了。“平方英里”（Square Mile，即倫敦金融城，因面積正好1平方英里得名——譯者注）的高科技電子垃圾箱捕捉來自智能手機的信息，以跟蹤不知情的機主的行蹤，從而針對他們發佈廣告，這些垃圾桶因令人毛骨悚然而被取締。

Meanwhile, a scientist has created software that combs Twitter connections to infer a tweeter’s ethnicity and even religion, raising the question of whether public posts can legitimately be used to deduce private information. Do we, as one lawyer suggested,need laws against misuse of our online personae?

同時，一名科學家做了一款軟件，能夠通過徹底搜查推特(Twitter)人脈圖，推斷一名推特用戶的種族、甚至宗教，這引發了使用公開發言推斷私人信息是否合法的疑問。我們是否如一名律師所認爲的那樣，需要出臺防止個人在線角色被濫用的法律？

We have wearable devices that, like Santa, see you when you are sleeping and know when you’re awake. It is possible that a company will find a way of deducing — through sentiment analysis of social media postings, visits to charity websites, checks on your bank balance and fitness tracking — if you’ve been bad or good.

我們有了可穿戴設備，這些設備像聖誕老人一樣，在你睡着時注視着你，也知道你何時是醒着的。一家公司有可能找到推斷你近來生活是否積極向上的辦法——通過分析社交媒體發言表現出的情緒、訪問慈善網站以及覈查你的銀行存款餘額和健康追蹤。

This goes to show: just because big data makes it technically possible to do something, does not mean we should.

這證明：並非僅僅因爲大數據使某事在技術上具備可行性，就意味着我們應該那麼做。