So this is James Risen. You may know him as the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. Long before anybody knew Edward Snowden's name, Risen wrote a book in which he famously exposed that the NSA was illegally wiretapping the phone calls of Americans. But it's another chapter in that book that may have an even more lasting impact. In it, he describes a catastrophic US intelligence operation in which the CIA quite literally handed over blueprints of a nuclear bomb to Iran. If that sounds crazy, go read it. It's an incredible story.
这是詹姆斯·瑞森。 他是纽约时报的记者 因获得普利策奖 被大家所熟知。 在大家还没听说过 爱德华·斯诺登的时候, 瑞森因为写了一本揭露 美国国家安全局非法窃听 美国民众通话的书 而备受瞩目。 但是在那本书的另一章节 可能有着更深远的影响。 那里他描述了美国情报部门 的一次灾难性的行动, 上面说中情局 把核弹的设计图 交给了伊朗。 如果你觉得太疯狂 你可以去读一下。 真是难以置信。
But you know who didn't like that chapter? The US government. For nearly a decade afterwards, Risen was the subject of a US government investigation in which prosecutors demanded that he testify against one of his alleged sources. And along the way, he became the face for the US government's recent pattern of prosecuting whistleblowers and spying on journalists.
谁不喜欢那一章? 美国政府。 将近十年之后, 瑞森成为了美国政府调查的主要人物 这次调查中检查方要求他 对于他所谓的消息来源做不利的证明。 他逐渐被推到了美国政府 起诉和监视新闻举报 一系列行动的风口浪尖上。
You see, under the First Amendment, the press has the right to publish secret information in the public interest. But it's impossible to exercise that right if the media can't also gather that news and protect the identities of the brave men and women who get it to them. So when the government came knocking, Risen did what many brave reporters have done before him: he refused and said he'd rather go to jail. So from 2007 to 2015, Risen lived under the specter of going to federal prison.
在第一修正案下 为了公众利益 新闻界有权报道各种秘密的消息 但是如果媒体无法收集消息 无法保护自己勇敢的线人 就没有办法行使 自己的权利。 所以当政府人员找上门的时候 瑞森像以前很多勇敢的记者一样 他拒绝提供任何信息。 他说他宁愿坐牢。 2007年到2015年, 瑞森在监视下 开始了联邦监狱的生活。
That is, until just days before the trial, when a curious thing happened. Suddenly, after years of claiming it was vital to their case, the government dropped their demands to Risen altogether. It turns out, in the age of electronic surveillance, there are very few places reporters and sources can hide. And instead of trying and failing to have Risen testify, they could have his digital trail testify against him instead. So completely in secret and without his consent, prosecutors got Risen's phone records. They got his email records, his financial and banking information, his credit reports, even travel records with a list of flights he had taken. And it was among this information that they used to convict Jeffrey Sterling, Risen's alleged source and CIA whistleblower.
就在审判前几天 奇怪的事情发生了。 突然在坚持 瑞森是本案关键几年之后, 政府放弃了 对瑞森的所有的要求。 实际上在电子监控的年代, 记者和线人无处可逃。 与其一次次要求瑞森举证 又被一次次拒绝, 政府选择用他的电子记录 来做不利证明。 在完全机密且 未经同意的情况下, 检查方拿到了瑞森的电话记录 邮箱记录和 财产及银行信息, 他的信用记录, 甚至他所乘坐的航班记录列表。 用上述的信息 他们确认杰弗里·斯特林 就是瑞森的消息来源 也是中情局的告发者。
Sadly, this is only one case of many. President Obama ran on a promise to protect whistleblowers, and instead, his Justice Department has prosecuted more than all other administrations combined. Now, you can see how this could be a problem, especially because the government considers so much of what it does secret. Since 9/11, virtually every important story about national security has been the result of a whistleblower coming to a journalist. So we risk seeing the press unable to do their job that the First Amendment is supposed to protect because of the government's expanded ability to spy on everyone.
很遗憾,这样的事情有很多。 奥巴马总统承诺保护告发者, 而相反地, 他的司法部门逮捕的告发者 比之前的总统加起来还多。 这就是一个巨大的问题, 尤其当政府对于 保护他们的秘密如此重视的时候。 自9.11之后,基本上所有 关于国家安全的重大新闻 都是由线人提供给记者的。 所以因为政府的监视遍布所有人, 我们很难看到新闻界行使 第一修正案赋予他们的权利。
But just as technology has allowed the government to circumvent reporters' rights, the press can also use technology to protect their sources even better than before. And they can start from the moment they begin speaking with them, rather than on the witness stand after the fact. Communications software now exists that wasn't available when Risen was writing his book, and is much more surveillance-resistant than regular emails or phone calls. For example, one such tool is SecureDrop, an open-source whistleblower submission system that was originally created by the late Internet luminary Aaron Swartz, and is now developed at the non-profit where I work, Freedom of the Press Foundation. Instead of sending an email, you go to a news organization's website, like this one here on The Washington Post. From there, you can upload a document or send information much like you would on any other contact form. It'll then be encrypted and stored on a server that only the news organization has access to. So the government can no longer secretly demand the information, and much of the information they would demand wouldn't be available in the first place.
不过正如科技让政府 监视记者们的一举一动一样, 新闻界也可以利用科技 更好地保护他们的线人。 而且保护可以从 第一次的对话开始, 而不是庭审在站上证人席的时候。 现在很多通信软件 是瑞森写他的书时所没有的, 而且反监视能力 比常规的邮件和电话好很多。 比如有一款叫做 SecureDrop的软件, 这是一款开源的 检举揭发系统 由亚伦·斯沃茨, 一位已故的互联网大师创造。 在我所工作的地方 新闻自由基金会 开发使用。 不采取发邮件的方式 你可以去某个新闻机构的网站, 比如这里的华盛顿邮报。 在这里你可以上传文档或发送信息 就想用其他方式传递信息一样。 消息会被加密存放在服务器中 只有新闻机构的人可以查看。 所以政府再也无法秘密追踪这些信息, 就算追踪到了信息 也不知道最初来自哪里。
SecureDrop, though, is really only a small part of the puzzle for protecting press freedom in the 21st century. Unfortunately, governments all over the world are constantly developing new spying techniques that put us all at risk. And it's up to us going forward to make sure that it's not just the tech-savvy whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden, who have an avenue for exposing wrongdoing. It's just as vital that we protect the next veteran's health care whistleblower alerting us to overcrowded hospitals, or the next environmental worker sounding the alarm about Flint's dirty water, or a Wall Street insider warning us of the next financial crisis. After all, these tools weren't just built to help the brave men and women who expose crimes, but are meant to protect all of our rights under the Constitution.
SecureDrop只是 21世纪保护新闻自由 的一块小小的拼图。 不过世界各地的政府 也无时无刻不在 开发新的监视技术 让我们更加危险。 所以让我们努力前行 不仅仅保护高科技的告发者 像斯诺登一样 有自己的渠道揭露恶行的告发者 也要保护那些 提醒我们医院过于拥挤的 揭发退伍老兵医疗卫生问题的告发者 保护那些对弗林特市污水 敲响警钟的环卫工人 保护那些让我们警惕 下一次金融危机的华尔街线人。 所以,这些工具 不是为了保护那些勇敢的敢于 揭露罪行的线人们 而是为了保护 宪法下所有人应有的权利。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
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