科技巨頭與美國政府的信息爭奪戰
WASHINGTON — In an investigation involving guns and drugs, the Justice Department obtained a court order this summer demanding that Apple turn over, in real time, text messages between suspects using iPhones.
華盛頓——今年夏天，在一起涉及槍支和毒品的調查中，美國司法部獲得了法院命令，要求蘋果(Apple)實時提交使用iPhone的嫌疑人之間的短信。
Apple’s response: Its iMessage system was encrypted and the company could not comply.
蘋果的迴應是：iMessage系統是加密的，所以公司無法提交。
Government officials had warned for months that this type of standoff was inevitable as technology companies like Apple and Google embraced tougher encryption. The case, coming after several others in which similar requests were rebuffed, prompted some senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials to advocate taking Apple to court, several current and former law enforcement officials said.
在此之前的多個月裏，政府官員就不斷髮出警告：隨着蘋果、谷歌(Google)等科技公司開始採用更加嚴格的加密方案，這種僵局是不可避免的。一些現任和前任執法人員表示，在此案發生之前，還有其他幾次類似的要求也遭到拒絕，導致司法部和聯邦調查局(FBI)的一些高級官員主張把蘋果公司告上法庭。
While that prospect has been shelved for now, the Justice Department is engaged in a court dispute with another tech company, Microsoft. The case, which goes before a federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday and is being closely watched by industry officials and civil liberties advocates, began when the company refused to comply with a warrant in December 2013 for emails from a drug trafficking suspect. Microsoft said federal officials would have to get an order from an Irish court, because the emails were stored on servers in Dublin.
雖然此事被暫時擱置到一邊，司法部卻正在與另一家科技公司微軟(Microsoft)對簿公堂。位於紐約的一家聯邦上訴法院本週三將審理該案，行業人士和公民自由權益提倡者正在密切關注。該案的起因是2013年12月，法院開出一份搜查令，要求微軟提供一名販毒嫌疑人的電子郵件，但微軟拒絕服從，表示聯邦官員必須獲得愛爾蘭法院的命令，因爲那些郵件儲存在都柏林的服務器裏。
The conflicts with Apple and Microsoft reflect heightened corporate resistance, in the post-Edward J. Snowden era, by American technology companies intent on demonstrating that they are trying to protect customer information.
政府與蘋果和微軟之間的這些衝突，反應了企業在“後愛德華·J·斯諾登(Edward J. Snowden)時代”施加的阻力有所加大，因爲美國科技公司想要表明，自己在努力保護用戶的信息。
“It’s become all wrapped up in Snowden and privacy issues,” said George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer who represents technology companies and as a Justice Department official two decades ago faced the challenge of how to wiretap phone networks that were becoming more digital.
“這些事都演變爲圍繞着斯諾登和隱私問題，”代表科技公司的律師喬治·J·特威利格三世(George J. Terwilliger III)說。他二十年前在司法部任職，當時電話網絡正變得日益數字化，因此他曾面臨如何竊聽的挑戰。
President Obama has charged White House Homeland Security and cybersecurity officials, along with those at the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the intelligence agencies, with proposing solutions — some legislative, some not — to the technology access issue. They are still hashing out their differences, according to law enforcement and administration officials.
奧巴馬總統讓白宮的國土安全和網絡安全官員，連同司法部、聯邦調查局及各情報機構的官員一起，提出一些方案——部分涉及立法，部分不涉及——來解決從科技公司獲得信息的問題。根據執法官員和奧巴馬政府內部人士的說法，目前他們還在努力消除彼此間的分歧。
Some Justice and F.B.I. officials have been frustrated that the White House has not moved more quickly or been more outspoken in the public relations fight that the tech companies appear to be winning, the law enforcement officials said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private conversations.
多名執法官員表示，司法部和聯邦調查局的一些官員感到不快，他們覺得白宮行動太慢，在公關大戰中不夠慷慨陳詞，似乎被科技公司佔據了上風。由於沒有獲得私下討論的許可，這些官員不願具名。
The White House, after months of study, has yet to articulate a public response to the argument that a victory in the Microsoft case would provide authoritarian governments, particularly the Chinese and Russians, with a way to get access into computer servers located in the United States.
有人提出，如果微軟這次敗訴，那麼極權政府——尤其是中國和俄羅斯——就可能會獲得一條途徑，從位於美國的計算機服務器上取得信息。白宮已經研究了數月之久，但尚未公開闡明對這種觀點的迴應。
“Clearly, if the U.S. government wins, the door is open for other governments to reach into data centers in the U.S.,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in a recent interview. Companies and civil liberties groups have been sending in briefs of their own, largely opposing the government’s surveillance powers.
“很顯然，如果美國政府獲勝，大門就會敞開，其他國家的政府就可以從美國的數據中心獲取數據了，”微軟的總法律顧問布拉德·史密斯(Brad Smith)在近期的一次採訪中說。公司和公民自由組織在散發自己的宣傳資料，主要是表示反對政府掌握監視的權力。
At issue are two types of encoding. The first is end-to-end encryption, which Apple uses in its iMessage system and FaceTime, the video conversation system. Companies like Open Whisper Systems, the maker of Signal, and WhatsApp have adopted such encryption for stand-alone apps, which are of particular concern to counterterrorism investigators.
問題關乎兩種類型的編碼。一種是端到端加密，蘋果公司在iMessage和視頻聊天服務FaceTime中就使用了這種方式。Signal所屬的Open Whisper Systems公司和WhatsApp在單獨的應用上也採用了這種加密方式，而此類應用是反恐調查人員尤其關注的一個問題。
With Apple, the encryption and decryption is done by the phones at either end of the conversation; Apple does not keep copies of the message unless one of the users loads it into iCloud, where it is not encrypted. (In the drug and gun investigation this summer, Apple eventually turned over some stored iCloud messages. While they were not the real-time texts the government most wanted, officials said they saw it as a sign of cooperation.)
在蘋果公司，加密和解密都是由其中一方的通話手機來進行的。蘋果沒有相關訊息的備份，除非一方用戶將其上傳到不加密的iCloud上。（在今夏那起毒品和槍支調查中，蘋果最後還是移交了存儲在iCloud上的部分訊息。儘管它們不是政府最想要的實時短信，但官員表示，他們認爲這是合作的標誌。）
The second type of encoding involves sophisticated encryption software on Apple and Android phones, which makes it all but impossible for anyone except the user of the phone to open stored content — pictures, contacts, saved text messages and more — without an access code. The F.B.I. and local authorities oppose the technology, saying it put them at risk of “going dark” on communications between terrorists and about criminal activity on city streets. The American military is more divided on the issue, depending on the mission.
第二種編碼涉及蘋果和Android手機上的複雜的加密軟件。有了它們，除手機用戶外，任何人在沒有訪問碼的情況下幾乎都不可能打開存儲內容，如照片、聯繫人、保存下來的短信等。FBI和地方當局反對這項技術，稱它讓自身面臨對通訊信息一無所知的風險，而相關通訊會涉及恐怖分子，以及街頭犯罪活動。美國軍方在這個問題上則存在一定的分歧，具體情況視任務而定。
Officials say a court fight with Apple is still an option, though they acknowledge it would be a long shot. Some object that a legal battle would make it harder for the companies to compromise, the law enforcement officials said. They added that Apple and other companies have privately expressed willingness to find common ground.
官員稱，與蘋果對薄公堂依然是選擇之一，但他們承認，成功的可能性很小。執法官員稱，一些人持反對意見，認爲打官司會導致科技企業更難妥協。他們還表示，蘋果等公司私下裏表示願意尋找共同點。
Apple declined to comment on the case for this article. But company officials have argued publicly that the access the government wants could be exploited by hackers and endanger privacy.
蘋果拒絕爲本文評論該案。但公司領導層曾公開表示，政府希望獲得的訪問權限可能會被黑客利用，危及隱私。
“There’s another attack on our civil liberties that we see heating up every day — it’s the battle over encryption,” Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, told a conference on electronic privacy this year. “We think this is incredibly dangerous.”
“我們看到，又一場針對公民自由的攻擊每天都在升溫，它就是圍繞加密展開的鬥爭，”蘋果首席執行官蒂姆·庫克(Tim Cook)在今年的一次有關電子隱私的會議上說。“我們認爲這種情況極其危險。”
Echoing the arguments of industry experts, he added, “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too.” If criminals or countries “know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it,” he concluded.
接下來，他重複了行業專家的觀點，“如果爲了給警察行方便而把鑰匙放在門墊下，那麼竊賊也能找到。”如果罪犯或某些國家“知道有一把鑰匙藏在某個地方，那麼他們不找到鑰匙是不會罷休的，”他總結道。
The Microsoft case centers on whether the fact that data is stored around the world relieves American firms of turning it over. The government, which won in Federal District Court, has argued in its brief to the appeals court that where the data is stored is irrelevant because the company still has control of email records. The White House declined to comment because the case is in litigation.
微軟一案的核心是，數據存放在世界各地這個事實，是否能免除美國公司移交數據的責任。在聯邦地區法院勝訴的政府在給上訴法院的案情摘要中稱，數據存放在哪裏無關緊要，因爲微軟依然控制着電子郵件記錄。因爲案件正在訴訟過程中，白宮拒絕置評。
“People want to know what law will be applied to their data,” Mr. Smith of Microsoft said. “French want their rights under French law, and Brazilians under Brazilian law. What is the U.S. government going to do when other governments reach into the U.S. data centers, without notifying the U.S. government?”
“大家想知道他們的數據會適用什麼法律，”微軟的史密斯說。“法國人希望用法國的法律保護自己的權利，巴西人希望用巴西的法律。假如其他國家的政府無需通知美國政府就能進入美國的數據中心，美國政府會怎麼做？”
Chinese firms already have plans to build facilities on American soil that would store electronic communications, so the question may be more than hypothetical. In its brief, Microsoft argues that Congress will ultimately have to weigh in on the issue, since it is as much a political matter as a legal one: “Only Congress has the institutional competence and constitutional authority to balance law enforcement needs against our nation’s sovereignty, the privacy of its citizens and the competitiveness of its industry.”
中國公司已經打算在美國境內修建設施，用以存放電子通訊信息，所以這個問題並非憑空想象。在案情摘要中，微軟認爲國會最終將不得不介入此事，因爲這既是一個政治問題，也是一個法律問題：“只有國會擁有相應的制度能力和憲法權力來平衡執法需求與國家主權、公民隱私和業界競爭力之間的關係。”
