隐私为什么重要

Why Does Privacy Matter?

隐私为什么重要

passed in 1986! While an update to the law-- spurred on by the General Petraeus scandal -- is in the works, it only aims to add some more protection to electronic communication like emails. This still does not shield our privacy from other, possibly nefarious, ways that our data can be collected and put to use. Some legislators would much rather not have legal restrictions that could, as Rep. Marsha Blackburn stated in an op-ed, "threaten the lifeblood of the Internet: data." Consider Rep. Blackburn's remarks during an April 2010 Congressional hearing: "[A]nd what happens when you follow the European privacy model and take information out of the information economy? ... Revenues fall, innovation stalls and you lose out to innovators who choose to work elsewhere."

我们的隐私正面临前所未有的风险，但不幸的是，相关的法律制度却落后于创新的脚步。的确，最近的一部主要隐私法《电子通信隐私法》还是在1986年通过的！虽然因为彼得雷乌斯将军的丑闻事件而触发了对该法律的更新，但这种更新也仅仅是对于例如邮件等电子通信予以更多的保护，仍然无法把我们的隐私与其他很可能违法的行为区别开来，我们的数据信息很可能会被非法搜集并使用。玛莎·布莱克本作为代表本在一篇专栏当中说，一些立法者宁愿不要相关的法律限制，因为这会“威胁互联网的命脉：数据。”听听布莱克本在2010年四月的一场国会听证会的发言：“如果我们效仿欧洲的隐私模式，把信息从信息经济当中抽离出来会发生什么情况呢？……国民经济衰落、创新发展停滞，而你会输给选择到别处工作的创新者们。”

Even though the practices of many companies such as Facebook are legal, there is something disconcerting about them. Privacy should have a deeper purpose than the one ascribed to it by those who treat it as a currency to be traded for innovation, which in many circumstances seems to actually mean corporate interests. To protect our privacy, we need a better understanding of its purpose and why it is valuable.

即便是很多诸如Facebook等公司的行为是合法的，他们的做法还是有令人不满的地方。隐私应该拥有

更加深刻的目的，而不应只是像现在这样把它作为换取创新的货币，在很多情况下这似乎也就等同于公司利益。要想保护隐私，我们需要对于隐私的目的以价值进行更为深入的了解。

That's where Georgetown University law professor Julie E. Cohen comes in. In a forthcoming article for the Harvard Law Review, she lays out a strong argument that addresses the titular concern " What Privacy Is For." Her approach is fresh, and as technology critic Evgeny Morozov rightly tweeted, she wrote "the best paper on privacy theory you'll get to read this year." (He was referring to 2012.)

这就涉及到乔治城大学法律教授朱莉·科恩的研究领域了。在《哈佛法律评论》期刊上即将发表的一篇论文中，她提出了关于“隐私是为了什么”这一话题的有力论点。她的观点十分新颖，正如科技评论家耶夫根尼·莫洛佐夫微博上说的那样，朱莉·科恩写出了“今年在隐私理论方面最优秀的文章“（他指的是2012年）。

At bottom, Cohen's argument criticizes the dominant position held by theorists and legislators who treat privacy as just an instrument used to advance some other principle or value, such as liberty, inaccessibility, or control. Framed this way, privacy is relegated to one of many defenses we have from things like another person's prying eyes, or Facebook's recent attempts to ramp up its use of facial-recognition software and collect further data about us without our explicit consent. As long as the principle in question can be protected through some other method, or if privacy gets in the way of a different desirable goal like innovation, it is no longer useful and can be disregarded.

科恩的观点本质上是对于当今理论家和立法者所持有的主要观进行批判，他们将隐私看作是发展如自由、不可存取性、或控制等原理或价值的工具。在这一框架下，隐私就被降级为我们多种防卫的其中一种，比如防止他人的偷窥，比如防止Facebook最近在未经个人明确授权的情况下，试图提升其面部识别软件以此获取更多用户数据的行为。只要是能通过其他途径来保护的原则，或是当隐私阻碍了其他像创新这样更有利可图的目标时，那么这些原则就显得不那么有用因而也会被漠视。

Cohen doesn't think we should treat privacy as a dispensable instrument. To the contrary, she argues privacy is irreducible to a "fixed condition or attribute (such as seclusion or control) whose boundaries can be crisply delineated by the application of deductive logic. Privacy is shorthand for breathing room to engage in the process of self-development."