Every step you take你的一举一动

As cameras become ubiquitous and able to identify people, more safeguards on privacy will be needed
如今摄像头愈渐无处不在，且愈加具备人脸识别的功能，由此，我们必须采取更多措施保障隐私。

Nov 16th 2013 |From the print edition
2013年11月16日｜印刷版

“THIS season there is something at the seaside worse than sharks,” declared a newspaper in 1890. “It is the amateur photographer.” The invention of the handheld camera appalled 19th-century so  ciety, as did the “Kodak fiends” who patrolled beaches snapping sunbathers.
“这个季节，海边最可怕的不是鲨鱼”，一家报刊在1890年如是报道，“而是业余摄影师。”便携相机的发明让十九世纪的社会震惊，而那些“柯达狂人”——专在海边游逛偷拍晒日光浴的男男女女——也令之瞠目结舌。

More than a century later, amateur photography is once more a troubling issue. Citizens of rich countries have got used to being watched by closed-circuit cameras that guard roads and cities. But as cameras shrink and the cost of storing data plummets, it is individuals who are taking the pictures.
一百多年之后，业余摄影师又一次成为棘手问题。富裕国家安有诸多监控道路和城市的闭路摄像头，其公民已经习惯了被它们监控。但随着摄像头体积减小，储存数据的成本锐减，照相监控一事多由个人操刀。

Through a Glass, darkly
暗暗地，戴上谷歌眼镜

Some 10,000 people are already testing a prototype of Google Glass, a miniature computer worn like spectacles (see article). It aims to replicate all the functions of a smartphone in a device perched on a person’s nose. Its flexible frame holds both a camera and a tiny screen, and makes it easy for users to take photos, send messages and search for things online.
谷歌眼镜是一款可以戴起来的微型电脑，如今已有大约一万人正在对其模型进行测试。谷歌眼镜旨在能架在鼻梁上实现一切与智能手机相同的功能。它可伸缩的框架上装有一个摄像头和一个小屏幕，为用户提供更为便捷的照相、发短信和网上冲浪体验。

Glass may fail, but a wider revolution is under way. In Russia, where insurance fraud is rife, at least 1m cars already have cameras on their dashboards that film the road ahead. Police forces in America are starting to issue officers with video cameras, pinned to their uniforms, which record their interactions with the public. Collar-cams help anxious cat-lovers keep tabs on their wandering pets. Paparazzi have started to use drones to photograph celebrities in their gardens or on yachts. Hobbyists are even devising clever ways to get cameras into space.
谷歌眼镜可能败北，但是更为广泛的革命正在到来。在保险诈骗盛行的俄国，至少有一百万辆车装有仪表板摄像头，以便拍摄前方路况。美国警方正开始向警官发放别在制服上的摄像头，以记录其和群众的交流情况。衣领摄像头让嗜猫如命的人随时监控它们四处游荡的宠物。狗仔队已经开始使用无人飞机偷拍庭院里或游艇上的名流。发烧友甚至在智取让摄像头进入太空的途径。

Ubiquitous recording can already do a lot of good. Some patients with brain injuries have been given cameras: looking back at images can help them recover their memories. Dash-cams can help resolve insurance claims and encourage people to drive better. Police-cams can discourage criminals from making groundless complaints against police officers and officers from abusing detainees. A British soldier has just been convicted of murdering a wounded Afghan because the act was captured by a colleague’s helmet-camera. Videos showing the line of sight of experienced surgeons and engineers can help train their successors and be used in liability disputes. Lenses linked to computers are reading street-signs and product labels to partially sighted people.
无孔不入的摄像好处已经够多了。一些脑部伤患的病人配有摄像机，因为回看影像有助于他们恢复记忆。仪表摄像有助于解决保险纠纷，促使人们提高驾驶技术。警察摄像能让罪犯不敢轻易地无理投诉警官，也让警官无法任意虐待囚犯。一位英国士兵刚因谋杀一位受伤的阿富汗人而定罪，就是因为警员头盔上的摄像头捕捉到了证据。显示资深外科医生和工程师视线所及之处的摄像能为训练继承人提供辅助，同时也能在民事纠纷中派上用场。与电脑相连的镜片能够为弱视群体读取街头标志和商品标签。

Optimists see broader benefits ahead. Plenty of people carry activity trackers, worn on the wrist or placed in a pocket, to monitor their exercise or sleep patterns; cameras could do the job more effectively, perhaps also spying on their wearers’ diets. “Personal black boxes” might be able to transmit pictures if their owner falls victim to an accident or crime. Tiny cameras trained to recognise faces could become personal digital assistants, making conversations as searchable as documents and e-mails. Already a small band of “life-loggers” squirrel away years of footage into databases of “e-memories”.
乐观主义者认为在未来还有更多裨益。如今不乏人群携带行动跟踪器——戴在手腕上的，放在口袋里的——监控自己的运动或睡觉习惯，若装上摄像头，就能更有效地监控，兴许还可能监控携带者的饮食习惯。“个人小黑盒”可以在其寄主罹难或被害的情况下传送影像。能够识别人脸的小型摄像头可以成为个人数字助手，让对话信息可以像搜索文件和邮件一样搜索出来。已经有一小撮“生活记录者”将多年影像存入“电子记忆”数据库。

Not everybody will be thrilled by these prospects. A perfect digital memory would probably be a pain, preserving unhappy events as well as cherished ones. Suspicious spouses and employers might feel entitled to review it.
看到这些前景，可不是人人都高兴地起来。完美的数字记忆也可能成为伤痛之源，它记录了弥足珍贵的记忆，也保留了种种不快。人生伴侣或顶头上司若生性多疑，很可能觉得他们有权重温这些记忆。

The bigger worry is for those in front of the cameras, not behind them. School bullies already use illicit snaps from mobile phones to embarrass their victims. The web throngs with furtive photos of women, snapped in public places. Wearable cameras will make such surreptitious photography easier. And the huge, looming issue is the growing sophistication of face-recognition technologies, which are starting to enable businesses and governments to extract information about individuals by scouring the billions of images online. The combination of cameras everywhere—in bars, on streets, in offices, on people’s heads—with the algorithms run by social networks and other service providers that process stored and published images is a powerful and alarming one. We may not be far from a world in which your movements could be tracked all the time, where a stranger walking down the street can immediately identify exactly who you are.
与其担心拍照的人，还不如担心那些被拍的人。校园恶霸已经在用相机偷拍，胡作非为，凌辱他们的欺侮对象。网站上充斥着在公共场合偷拍的女性私密照片。便携相机将会愈加为这些鬼鬼祟祟的偷拍提供便利。即将面临的重大问题是愈加先进的人脸识别技术，这项技术将允许公司和政府通过排查网上数亿图像来提取个人信息。酒吧、街头、办公室、人头上，相机无处不在，若社会网络工作者和其它处理储存和公开图像的服务提供者利用这一点来进行数学运算，这后果将十分重大，值得警醒。我们很快可能就要走进这么一个世界，在那儿，我们一举一动都会被跟踪，一个走在街上的陌生人马上就可以明确地知道你是谁。

Sovereign over your own body and mind—and face
身体主权、思想主权和人脸主权

This is where one of this newspaper’s strongly held beliefs—that technological progress should generally be welcomed, not feared—runs up against an even deeper impulse, in favour of liberty. Freedom has to include some right to privacy: if every move you make is being chronicled, liberty is curtailed.
虽然本刊坚定不移地相信，我们大体上应该欢迎科技进步而非恐惧科技进步，但这一信念还是在这里与一个更深层次的冲动起了冲突，那个冲动更倾向自由。要享有自由，就必须保有隐私的权利：如果你的一举一动都被详尽记录在案，那么自由就受到了侵害。

One option is to ban devices that seem irksome. The use of dashboard cameras is forbidden in Austria. Drivers who film the road can face a €10,000 ($13,400) fine. But banning devices deprives people of their benefits. Society would do better to develop rules about where and how these technologies can be used, just as it learned to cope with the Kodak fiends.
一个方法就是禁止安装看起来很令人厌恶的摄像头。奥地利就禁止使用仪表相机，若司机摄像记录路况，将被罚款一万欧元（13，400美元）。但是一概禁用就让人们完全无法享受到它的好处。更好的方法是，社会发展出一些规则，限定在那些情况下，能以何种方式使用这些科技，就像当年逐渐懂得如何正当地处理“柯达狂人”。

For the moment, companies are treading carefully. Google has banned the use of face-recognition in apps on Glass and its camera is designed to film only in short bursts. Japanese digital camera-makers ensure their products emit a shutter sound every time a picture is taken. Existing laws to control stalking or harassment can be extended to deal with peeping drones.
就目前而言，各公司都在谨慎行事。谷歌禁止在谷歌眼镜上使用人脸识别应用，且其相机设定只能录像简短的片段。日本数字相机制造商则确保其产品在拍照时一定会发出“喀嚓”的声响。现有控制跟踪狂和骚扰行为的法律可以拓展到偷窥无人机领域。

Still, as cameras become smaller, more powerful and ubiquitous, new laws may be needed to preserve liberty. Governments should be granted the right to use face-recognition technology only where there is a clear public good (identifying a bank robber for instance). When the would-be identifiers are companies or strangers in the street, the starting-point should be that you have the right not to have your identity automatically revealed. The principle is the same as for personal data. Just as Facebook and Google should be forced to establish high default settings for privacy (which can be reduced at the user’s request), the new cameras and recognition technologies should be regulated so as to let you decide whether you remain anonymous or not.
即便如此，随着摄像头越来越小，功能越来越强大，所及之处越来越普遍，可能必须颁布新的法律来维护自由。政府应该保证，使用人脸识别技术的权利只限于在有明显公共利益的情况下（比如说识别银行抢劫犯）。若待识别人脸为同伴或街头的陌生人，出发点是应你享有让自己身份不自动暴露的权利。就个人数据而言，原则是一样的。就像应该强迫脸谱和谷歌默认高级别的隐私设置（可以应用户要求而降低），所以应该对新置相机和人脸识别技术加以监管，让你们自己决定是否要保持无名氏的状态。

Silicon Valley emphasises the liberating power of technology—and it is often right. But the freedom that a gadget gives one person can sometimes take away liberty from another. Liberal politicians have been lazy about defending the idea of personal space, especially online. The fight should start now. Otherwise, in the blink of an eye, privacy could be gone.
硅谷强调科技的解放力，且通常情况下这是对的。但是有时候一项设备在赋予一人自由的同时，却拿走了另一人的自由。自由政治向来不愿意捍卫个人空间的理念，尤其是网络个人空间。但是，现在应该打响这场保卫战了。否则，只消一眨眼的功夫，隐私就可能消失得无影无踪。