評論
打印
CAN CONGRESS REIN IN BIG TECH?
國會能控制住大型科技公司嗎?
Washington has been happy to let high-tech companies police themselves—until now
華盛頓一直樂于讓高科技公司自我監督——到現在為止
ABOUT TWO HOURS INTO A SENATE HEARING ON April 10,
4月10日，參議院聽證會進行到大約兩個小時之后，
Mark Zuckerberg was asked if he would like to take a break.
馬克·扎克伯格被問及是否要休息一下。
He was in the midst of a rare spectacle: two powerful committees, with a total of 44 Senators,
當時，他正罕見地被圍繞在一大群人中間：兩個權威的委員會，總44名參議員，
were holding a joint hearing to grill a single CEO.
正在舉行一場聯合聽證會，盤問這位CEO。
So when Zuckerberg responded by saying he wasn’t tired yet, the packed room broke into laughter.
當扎克伯格回應說他還不累的時候，滿屋子的人都哄堂大笑起來。
The levity didn’t last long.
但這種輕松的氛圍并沒有持續多久。
“What happened here was, in effect, willful blindness,”
“這次的問題實質上是某些人故意視而不見的引起的問題，”
said Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the next at bat, as he pressed the 33-year-old Facebook founder
針對名為“劍橋分析”的政治營銷公司如何在未經用戶同意的情況下，獲得了將近8700萬用戶的個人數據這一問題，
on exactly how a political marketing firm called Cambridge Analytica ended up with data from some 87 million users’ proiles without their consent.
接下來發問的康涅狄格州參議員理查德·布盧門撒爾在向這位33歲的Facebook創始人施壓時說到。
“It was heedless,” he went on, “and reckless.”
“這種做法不僅輕率，”他接著說，“而且魯莽。”
In Silicon Valley, heedlessness and recklessness have traditionally been seen as virtues—
“輕率”和“魯莽”歷來是被硅谷人視為美德——
Facebook’s early internal rallying cry was “move fast and break things”—
Facebook早期的內部口號就是“快速行動，打破陳規”——
and necessary precursors for innovation.
視為創新必要的先驅的。
But a long-simmering reality check is coming to a head across the high-tech industry.
然而，一場醞釀已久的現實對這一理念的檢驗，正在對整個高科技行業產生重大影響。
While privacy concerns and even large-scale data breaches are nothing new,
盡管有關隱私甚至是大規模的數據泄露的問題都早已不是什么新鮮事了，
experts say the fracas at Facebook has brought the dilemma of increasingly powerful technology into better focus.
專家表示，有關Facebook的大吵大鬧還是引起了人們對日益強大的技術帶來的困境的更多關注。
“Being these networked citizens of the world, it’s kind of a struggle, at times, to say why we care about privacy,”
“作為網絡化的世界公民，有時，很難說我們為什么要關心隱私，”
says Urs Gasser, executive director at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
哈佛大學伯克曼克萊因互聯網與社會中心執行董事烏爾斯·加塞說。
“But in this case, there is this element that the data about us is suddenly used to manipulate us in our decisionmaking and somehow mess with our democracy.”
“但這次的問題還有這樣的一面：我們的數據突然被用來操縱我們的決策，甚至擾亂起我們的民主了。”
The concerns go beyond social networking.
這類擔憂已經不再局限于社交網絡的范疇了。
Over two days at two hearings in both chambers,
在兩天的參眾兩院聽證會上，
members of Congress aired grievances not just about Zuckerberg’s company but also the ills of Google and Twitter,
國會議員們不僅表達了對扎克伯格公司的不滿，也表達了對谷歌和推特存在的問題，
the lack of diversity in the industry and the lack of rural fiber-optic cable.
互聯網行業缺乏多樣性，農村缺乏光纖等問題的不滿。
In calls for closer scrutiny of firms from Apple to Amazon, some see a coming “techlash.”
在呼吁對蘋果到亞馬遜之類的公司進行更嚴格的審查的呼聲中，有人預見到一場“技術沖擊”即將到來。
And by the time he appeared on Capitol Hill, Zuckerberg seemed to have grasped that.
出現在國會山時，扎克伯格似乎就已經明白了這一點。
“As Facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool for staying connected,” he said.
“隨著Facebook的發展，世界各地的人們都有了一個強大的，用來和朋友保持聯系的新工具，”他說。
“But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”
“但很明顯，我們在防止這些工具被惡意利用方面做得還不夠。”
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
