天罗地网|《经济学人》:你只要享受了信息技术所带来的便利,就逃不出它无所不在的魔掌

2016-08-25 徐启 我与我们的世界 我与我们的世界

本期导读:本期文章切入视角极小,所报道的事情也不那么宏大,篇章也不长,但这么迷你的一篇报道却完全可以作为我们“窥见”豹子全身的一个“斑点”因为,它涉及到我们所处时代中的系列重要议题,即信息安全、财产安全、人身安全。

 

我们早已进入信息时代,信息技术也早已渗透到我们每个人生活的方方面面,我们无时无刻不在享受着信息技术所带来的便利,但同时,信息时代也潜藏着各种莫大的风险,不管你出行方式是飞机、火车、自驾、公交、地铁,甚至是步行,对于某些人来讲,你的行踪尽在他们的股掌之间,你的银行交易、网上购物、快递收发、求医问药等等,也都在他们的眼皮子底下。
 

不过,不管怎样,生活还得继续,在中国这个和谐社会中,你的信息安全、财产安全、人身安全一般情况下是没有问题的,除非发生下述两种情况:一个是不知不觉地被犯罪分子盯上,一个是不知不觉地被警察蜀黍盯上。。。
 


Cutpurse capers

中美高校专家团队研究发现:小偷们的行踪总是不定滴

Artful dodger, your time may be up

就算你花样再多,也逃不出信息技术布下的天罗地网


Big Brother really is watching you 老大哥真的在看( kàn and kān)着你
 

SMART-CARD public-transport ticketing systems let people hop between buses, subways, trams, surface rail and river boats—even when these are operated by different companies—without having to buy new tickets. This undoubted good, though, has ramifications. One is that anyone with access can, by following individual passengers (or, at least, their cards), study precisely where people are going.

现代化的公共交通体系为人们带来了不少便利,只需一卡在手,人们就可在公交、地铁、电车、轮渡等公共交通网络里自由穿行,即使运营公司不同,也不会有什么问题。无疑,这确实有好处,但同时也会带来很多潜在问题。其中的一个就是,任何人,只要条件许可,便可对他人抑或他人的交通卡进行精准跟踪。
 

1.ramification [ˌræmɪfɪˈkeɪʃn] n.衍生物,结果;分叉,分支;支流。


Companies use this knowledge to optimise services—again, an undoubted good. But many other things, some disturbing to freedom lovers, might also be done with smart-card data. One, outlined in San Francisco this week at the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, seems completely unsinister on the face of it. This is to use such data to catch pickpockets.

公共交通运营公司能利用交通卡数据信息来优化服务,这无疑也能带来好处。但这些信息还能用来做很多其他事情,其中有些或许还是让深爱自由的人士感到烦扰的事。这不,本周美国旧金山举行的“信息发现与数据挖掘会议”上就有这么一个事例,表面看起来全是好处,因为,他们是用这些数据信息来抓小偷儿滴。
 

1. sinister [ˈsɪnɪstə(r)] adj.危险的;不吉祥的;凶兆的;险恶的。


The idea is the brainchild of Xiong Hui of Rutgers University, in New Jersey, and Du Bowen and Hou Zhenshan of Beihang University, in Beijing. Together, they studied the movements of passengers on Beijing’s buses, trains and subways. As might be expected, most moved swiftly from A to B—taking the least time or smallest number of transfers to do so, and made similar journeys day after day. A small proportion, though, undertook trips that made little sense, or suddenly varied in their pattern.

该想法是美国新泽西州罗格斯大学的熊辉与中国北京航空航天大学的杜博闻以及侯振山通过共同研究所收获的智慧结晶。三位一起对北京公交、火车以及地铁上的客流进行了分析研究,研究结果也没什么意外之处,大多乘客都是从某地出发以耗时最短、换成次数最少的方式迅速地到达另外某地,不过,也有一小部分乘客行踪有点奇怪,也有些行踪规律会突然发生改变。
 

1. brainchild [ˈbreɪntʃaɪld]  n.脑力劳动的产物;独创的观念,点子。


Many of these anomalies have innocent explanations: a forgotten briefcase, perhaps, or a journey in an unfamiliar part of town. But sometimes the cause is more nefarious—a pickpocket plying his trade on the network, possibly employing a stolen travelcard to do so.

不过,这些异常行踪的原因很容易得到解释,比如,忘了拿行李,亦或人生地不熟走错了路。但有些时候,情况确实会令人嫌恶,可能是小偷在倒买倒卖,或是用偷来的交通卡在做那些事。
 

1.anomaly [əˈnɒməli]  n.异常,反常;不规则;畸形人(物);异常现象。

2.innocent [ˈɪnəsnt]  adj.无辜的,无罪的;清白的;天真无邪的;无知的;n.无辜者;头脑简单的人;天真无邪的人。

3.nefarious [nɪˈfeəriəs]  adj.极坏的,恶毒的。

4.ply [plaɪ]  vt.& vi.使用(工具);经常供应(食物、饮料);固定往来;经营生意;n.(毛线、绳等的)股;层;厚;(夹板的)层片;vt.(娴熟地)使用。


Thankfully, pickpockets are rare. But that makes detecting them all the more challenging. Dr Xiong used a two-step system. First, a computer program called a classifier looked at the peregrinations of 6m travelcards in and around Beijing between April and June 2014 and separated the outliers from the mundane travellers. A second classifier,primed with information about pickpocketing hotspots gleaned from police reports and social-media posts, then tried to spot the pickpockets among these outliers.

幸好的是,小偷没那么多,但这也使得对其进行监控更具挑战性。罗格斯大学的熊博士采用的是“两步筛选法”。首先,利用电脑程序对2014年4月至6月期间在北京及其周边有通行记录的600万张交通卡的数据信息进行分析,筛选出异常值;然后第二步,通过警方通报与媒体报道确定扒窃高发站点,然后把扒窃高发站点的交通信息与第一步所得到的信息进行对比分析,然后从中筛选出潜在嫌犯信息。
 

1.peregrination [ˌperəgrɪˈneɪʃn]  n.<正>旅行;旅程,游历。

2.mundane [mʌnˈdeɪn]  adj.平凡的;宇宙的;寻常的;世俗的。

3.prime [praɪm]  adj.最好的;首要的;最初的;基本的;n.精华;初期;全盛时期;青年;vt.使准备好;填装;事先指导;adv.极好地;vi.(为枪炮)装火药;涂底漆;修剪树枝;注水入泵引起。

4.glean [gli:n]  vi.捡拾落穗;vt.收集;拾落穗。


In this, it succeeded. It identified 93% of known pickpockets (ie, those caught by the police during the period in question). However, a second goal is to cast suspicion on as few innocents as possible. Here, its performance wasequivocal. Only one out of every 14 suspicious individuals was a known pickpocket. On the other hand, that numberpresumably included some unknown pickpockets, too.

针对抓小偷儿这个目的,通过这种办法确实行得通,因为,筛选出来的最终信息所涵盖的小偷数量占那个时间段里被缉拿归案小偷数量的93%。不过,重要的是,不能把清白乘客也纳入嫌疑范围而冤枉了好人,对此,效果是不理想的,因为,每14位嫌疑乘客中只有一位曾被缉拿归案。从另一个角度看,那些人中也可能有还没被抓到的窃贼。
 

1.equivocal [ɪˈkwɪvəkl] adj.模棱两可的;意义不明的;模糊的;(指人等)不可靠的。

2.presumably [prɪˈzju:məbli] adv.据推测;大概;可能;想来。


Even with a false-positive rate this high, though, Dr Xiong thinks he has developed a powerful tool. Monitoring a suspicious few using closed-circuit cameras is less daunting than following millions of riders. He says the technology will soon be piloted in Beijing and rolled out subsequently in other Chinese cities.

尽管误差比例如此之高,但熊博士依然认为,自己开发出的是一项具有强大威力的工具。不过,通过闭路监控系统对少量可疑人员进行跟踪总比在成千上万的人群中进行跟踪容易得多。熊博士还表示,该项技术会很快在北京进行试点,并随后在中国的其他城市予以推广。
 

1.false-positive ['fɔ:ls p'ɒzətɪv]  [医]假阳性的。

Not all experts are convinced. Shashi Verma, chief technology officer at Transport for London, and thus the man ultimately responsible for the smooth operation of that city’s Oyster card system, says his records show millions of ordinary people making all sorts of “weird, wonderful, complicated” journeys. Picking the criminal needles from the haystack of innocents is not as easy as it sounds. Dr Xiong is, however, confident in his team’s approach—so confident that they propose to investigate the movement patterns of other “asocial groups” such as “alcoholics, drug-users, homeless people and drug-dealers” on public-transport networks. Such mission creep is precisely what gives freedom lovers the willies. Picking up pickpockets is one thing. Using artificial intelligence to pursue those at the margins of society is quite another. Technology does not know the difference. But people need to.

不是所有专家都对此表示赞同。伦敦公共交通首席技术官沙士•韦尔玛就表示,伦敦公共交通一卡通“牡蛎卡”的数据信息显示,成百上千万的普通乘客行踪各种各样,有些表现怪异,有些效率极高,有些很是折腾。想从庞大人流中分辨出来几个小偷儿,堪如大海捞针,没想象的那么容易。不过,熊博士对其研究团队的成果非常有信心,以至于建议把这项技术应用于对公共交通网络中其他“边缘群体”的行踪进行监控,如嗜酒者、吸毒人员、流浪汉以及贩毒人员。目标任务如此艰巨,所采取的步伐却又如此细微,这种做事方式也让深爱自由的人士感到不安。抓小偷儿是一回事儿,利用信息技术对社会边缘人员进行监控却是另外一回事儿。这两码事儿,信息技术分不清,但人却需要能分清。
 

1.asocial [eɪ'səʊʃəl]  adj.缺乏社交性的,自我中心的,自私的。

2.willies [ˈwɪliz]  n.使某人害怕和不安;阳物( willy的名词复数 )。


注:

1:英文原文转自《经济学人》,非商业用途,仅限个人学习之目的。

2:转载请注明出处。

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