调查权力法案生效,将英国公民置于严密监视之下

Theresa May was central to pushing through the new spying laws in her job as home secretary Getty Images

特蕾莎·梅在她担任内政大臣期间，是推动新监视法案的核心人物

The UK's Investigatory Powers Act is now in effect, placing Britain under some of the widest-ranging spying powers ever seen.

英国的调查权力法案已经生效，英国情报机构正式被赋予史上最极端的侦查权力。

The law – passed last month but going into effect on 30 December – is intended as an update to Britain's often unwieldy surveillance legislation. But it also includes a large set of new powers – including the ability to collect the browsing records of everyone in the country and have them read by authorities as diverse as the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions.

该法案于上个月通过，但是将于12月30日开始生效，是目前英国繁琐的监视法案的升级版。该法赋予了政府新的监视权力，包括强制要求互联网服务供应商保存所有用户网页浏览的完整记录。有关部门可以调取这些记录，包括英国食品标准局以及劳动与养老金部。

Most of the central parts of the act are now in force. That includes new powers to gather and retain data on citizens, and new ways to force technology companies and others to hand over the data that they have about people to intelligence agencies.

该法案的大部分核心条款都已经生效。这包括赋予权力收集并保存公民信息，以及强制要求科技公司等其他单位向有关部门上交他们所拥有的用户信息。

Many of the most invasive powers in the bill haven't yet gone into force. That includes, for instance, the collection of those Internet Connection Records, which has been postponed until the government and internet companies have worked out how they can collect such information safely.

法案中那些最具侵入性的权力条款还没有生效。这包括，例如，互联网连接数据这部分将等到政府和互联网公司测试到能够安全的收集信息的时候再启用。

The government has argued that the powers introduced in the bill are necessary to allow intelligence agencies and police to stop modern crime and prosecute the people involved in it.

政府强调该法案中描述的权力对于支持监视机关和警察部门来阻止现代犯罪并起诉相关嫌疑人是非常必要的。

But Bella Sankey, Amnesty’s policy director, said that it was a "sad day" when the bill passed into law last month.

但是大赦政策顾问Bella Sanky表示，上个月通过该法案的那天是“悲哀的”一天。

“The Home Secretary is right that the Government has a duty to protect us, but these measures won’t do the job," she said then. "Instead they open every detail of every citizen’s online life up to state eyes, drowning the authorities in data and putting innocent people’s personal information at massive risk.

“内政大臣说政府有保护我们的义务，这倒是没错，但这些措施达不到保护我们的目的。相反，这些措施使得每位公民的网上生活的所有细节被一览无余，加重政府部门处理数据的负担，并且给无辜群众的个人信息带来极大的泄露风险。”

"This new law is world-leading – but only as a beacon for despots everywhere. The campaign for a surveillance law fit for the digital age continues, and must now move to the courts."

“这部新法律世界领先，但只是从专制上做到了领先。我们仍然需要一部适应这个数字化时代的监视法律，而现在必须去法院来解决问题。”

The law has been opposed by tens of thousands of people in a public petition. But much of that opposition only started after the bill was quietly passed into law by MPs, meaning that it was unlikely to have any effect.

该法案收到了数万人的反对请愿书，但是大部分的反对声音是在法案悄悄通过以后才发出的，所以没产生什么影响。

But some of the central powers of the law were criticised by European courts earlier this month. As such, the law is set to face a range of legal challenges and could be changed in the coming months and years.

但是该法案的部分核心条款本月受到了欧洲法院的批评。照这样下去，该法案将不得不面对大量的法律挑战，并且可能在接下来的岁月里进行调整。