The shocking police crackdown on protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown, underscored the extent to which advanced military weapons and equipment, designed for the battlefield, are making their way to small-town police departments across the United States. Although much tougher to observe, this same thing is happening with surveillance equipment.
在密苏里州弗格森的一场 令人震惊的对抗议者的镇压中, 警察开枪射杀了迈克尔▪布朗, 揭示了为作战而设计的 军用高级武器, 正向 全美国镇级警署渗透。 虽然更加不易察觉, 但军用监控设备也以同样方式来到了我们身边。
NSA-style mass surveillance is enabling local police departments to gather vast quantities of sensitive information about each and every one of us in a way that was never previously possible.
美国国家安全局形制的大型监控系统, 让本地警察局能够收集超大量的 个人敏感信息, 这是前所未有的。
Location information can be very sensitive. If you drive your car around the United States, it can reveal if you go to a therapist, attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, if you go to church or if you don't go to church. And when that information about you is combined with the same information about everyone else, the government can gain a detailed portrait of how private citizens interact.
位置信息可以是非常敏感的。 如果你在美国范围内开车, 它能显示你是去看医生, 还是去参加匿名酗酒者会议 去教堂,或者没去教堂。 如果将你的信息 和其他人的同类信息相结合, 政府就能详细地描绘出 公民间的私人关系。
This information used to be private. Thanks to modern technology, the government knows far too much about what happens behind closed doors. And local police departments make decisions about who they think you are based on this information.
这样的信息曾经是私密的, 而因为现代科技, 政府对家务事也知道的太多了。 地方警察局能根据这些信息, 对你的为人做出“官方”判断。
One of the key technologies driving mass location tracking is the innocuous-sounding Automatic License Plate Reader. If you haven't seen one, it's probably because you didn't know what to look for -- they're everywhere. Mounted on roads or on police cars, Automatic License Plate Readers capture images of every passing car and convert the license plate into machine-readable text so that they can be checked against hot lists of cars potentially wanted for wrongdoing.
方位跟踪最常用的, 是一种利用无害声波 自动抓拍车牌的技术。 如果你没见过这种监控, 很可能是因为你不知道怎么去找, 它无处不在。 有的装在马路上方,有的在警车上, 自动抓拍车牌相机会拍下经过的每一辆车, 然后把汽车牌照转换成可机读的文字, 这样就可以对照着黑名单 查出可疑车辆。
But more than that, increasingly, local police departments are keeping records not just of people wanted for wrongdoing, but of every plate that passes them by, resulting in the collection of mass quantities of data about where Americans have gone. Did you know this was happening?
不仅如此,现在日益增多的情况是, 地方警察局不仅会 查可疑车辆, 而是只要有车经过都查, 收集每一个美国人的大量信息, 了解他们的动态。 这件事你知道吗?
When Mike Katz-Lacabe asked his local police department for information about the plate reader data they had on him, this is what they got: in addition to the date, time and location, the police department had photographs that captured where he was going and often who he was with. The second photo from the top is a picture of Mike and his two daughters getting out of their car in their own driveway. The government has hundreds of photos like this about Mike going about his daily life. And if you drive a car in the United States, I would bet money that they have photographs like this of you going about your daily life.
当迈克▪卡茨拉卡德向当地警局 询问他的拍照记录, 这是他得到的结果: 除了日期,时间和地点 还有各种监控照片, 显示他经常去哪、和谁在一起。 上边数下来第二张照片是 迈克和他的两个女儿 在家门前一起下车的照片。 政府有几百张这样的照片, 能知道迈克每天的行踪。 如果你也在美国境内开车, 我打赌他们也有 关于你的各种生活照。
Mike hasn't done anything wrong. Why is it okay that the government is keeping all of this information? The reason it's happening is because, as the cost of storing this data has plummeted, the police departments simply hang on to it, just in case it could be useful someday. The issue is not just that one police department is gathering this information in isolation or even that multiple police departments are doing it. At the same time, the federal government is collecting all of these individual pots of data, and pooling them together into one vast database with hundreds of millions of hits, showing where Americans have traveled. This document from the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which is one of the agencies primarily interested in this, is one of several that reveal the existence of this database. Meanwhile, in New York City, the NYPD has driven police cars equipped with license plate readers past mosques in order to figure out who is attending.
迈克没做过任何错事 为什么政府可以这样收集他的信息? 原因就是, 由于储存信息的成本迅速下降, 警局就紧紧抓住它不放, 以防有朝一日能用上。 但问题是暗中搜集信息的 不是只有一家警局单干, 或者只有几家各干各的。 与此同时,政府也在 将这数以亿计的各种个人信息, 都收录到一个 统一的数据库中, 跟踪美国人都去过哪里。 联邦缉毒局的这个文件 是缉毒局的主要关注点之一, 证明了这样的数据库的存在。 同时,在纽约市, 纽约市警局派出装有摄像头的警车 开过清真寺,看有谁在里面。
The uses and abuses of this technology aren't limited to the United States. In the U.K., the police department put 80-year-old John Kat on a plate reader watch list after he had attended dozens of lawful political demonstrations where he liked to sit on a bench and sketch the attendees.
不是只有美国在滥用这项技术。 在英国,警察局 把80岁的约翰▪卡加入了黑名单 因为他出现在很多次合法的政治游行当中, 坐在一旁的长椅上,为游行者画素描。
License plate readers aren't the only mass location tracking technology available to law enforcement agents today. Through a technique known as a cell tower dump, law enforcement agents can uncover who was using one or more cell towers at a particular time, a technique which has been known to reveal the location of tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people. Also, using a device known as a StingRay, law enforcement agents can send tracking signals inside people's houses to identify the cell phones located there. And if they don't know which house to target, they've been known to drive this technology around through whole neighborhoods.
自动抓拍相机可不是执法机构 唯一使用的跟踪技术。 通过基站定位技术, 执法机构能够知道谁 在某一时刻正在使用哪些个基站, 这项技术能用来确定 几万甚至几十万人的位置。 另外还有一种设备叫做“魟鱼”,(即“IMSI捕手”) 执法机关能够在人们家里发送跟踪信号, 来确定家里都有哪些手机在工作。 如果他们没有明确的目标 据说就会 让这个设备在住宅区全部运行一遍。
Just as the police in Ferguson possess high-tech military weapons and equipment, so too do police departments across the United States possess high-tech surveillance gear. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.
就像弗格森的警察配备了 高科技军用武器, 全美国的警察也都配备了 高科技的监控设备。 你看不到(那些监控) 不代表它们就不存在。
The question is, what should we do about this? I think this poses a serious civil liberties threat. History has shown that once the police have massive quantities of data, tracking the movements of innocent people, it gets abused, maybe for blackmail, maybe for political advantage, or maybe for simple voyeurism.
问题是,我们应对此该做些什么? 我认为已这严重威胁到了公民的自由。 历史表明,一旦警察有足够大量的数据, 跟踪无辜民众的行踪, 数据就会被滥用,可能用于勒索、 政治获利, 抑或是单纯的偷窥。
Fortunately, there are steps we can take. Local police departments can be governed by the city councils, which can pass laws requiring the police to dispose of the data about innocent people while allowing the legitimate uses of the technology to go forward. Thank you. (Applause).
所幸的是,我们还是能采取一些措施。 地方警察局由市议会管理, 议会可以通过法律,要求警察 销毁无罪民众的数据, 同时允许进一步的合法使用这些科技。 谢谢。 (掌声)