婚外情扯出网络隐私安全

No matter how careful you are, it’s impossible to cover all your tracks when having an affair–US general David Petraeus found out the hard way.

不管你有多小心，想要完全掩盖掉婚外情行径也是不可能的，美国上将大卫•彼得雷乌斯以身试法，教训惨痛。

Petraeus, 60, was caught having an extramarital relationship with his 40-year-old biographer Paula Broadwell, who is also married. The scandal forced him to resign as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Nov 9.

现年60岁的彼得雷乌斯被爆出出轨丑闻，对方是40岁的已婚传记作家保拉•博德维。这桩丑闻迫使他不得不在11月9日辞去了美国中央情报局局长一职。

The affair was exposed after the FBI found intimate content in e-mails sent between the two. The scandal not only raised moral issues, but also threw online privacy and surveillance into the spotlight.

此前，联邦调查局发现了二人之间亲密暧昧的电子邮件，使得这段婚外情曝光。这桩丑闻不仅引发了道德问题，更是让网络隐私以及网络监控成为人们关注的焦点。

If a spymaster can’t prevent his personal e-mails from being snooped, what hope is there for the rest of us? Is online privacy just an illusion?

如果就连间谍头头都无法保证自己的私人电邮不被偷看，剩下我们这些普通人还指望什么呢？难道网络隐私压根不存在？

In fact, Petraeus and Broadwell were very discreet when communicating by e-mail. Not only were they using pseudonyms, they were also using a method known in the intelligence community as the “dead drop”.

事实上，彼得雷乌斯和博德维之间的在互通电邮时十分谨慎小心。他们不仅使用化名，还采取了情报机构非常熟悉的手段，即“情报秘密传递点”。

According to Slate magazine, a dead drop is a tactic favored by terrorists trying to evade government surveillance of their communication networks.

美国《石板》杂志称，情报秘密传递点是恐怖分子在试图摆脱政府对其通讯网络的监控时，所采用的一种策略。

Before the Internet, dead drops, often used by spies, would involve hiding a written message or package in a secret location or letterbox that only fellow operatives would know about.

在互联网出现之前，间谍通常采用这种方法，比如将信件或是包裹藏在一个只有自己人知道的秘密地点或信箱中。

According to an AP report, Petraeus and Broadwell used a high-tech version of this technique. Rather than sending messages by e-mail, they left them in a draft folder or in an electronic “dropbox”. The other person could then log on to the same account and read the draft e-mails there. This avoids creating an e-mail trail that is easier to trace.

美联社的一份报告称，彼得雷乌斯和博德维使用了高科技的情报秘密传递点。他们不通过电邮传递信息，而是将信息存放在草稿夹或秘密的电子邮箱里。另一个人便可以登陆同一账号并读取草稿邮件。从而避免产生更易于追踪的电子邮件发送记录。

But Petraeus should probably have known better. Using the dead drop tactic is not exactly secure. The same method was used by the perpetrators of the Madrid train bombing in 2004, which killed 191 people.

但是彼得雷乌斯本该更精于此道。使用这种秘密传递点的方法并不完全保险。制造2004年“马德里火车爆炸案”的凶犯曾用过相同手法，该事件致使191人丧生。

Over the years, law enforcement agencies have grown accustomed to terrorists using the dead drop, and technologies have been developed to counter it.

这些年来，执法机构已经对恐怖分子采用该方法习以为常了，也研究出了应对手法。

The FBI also captured Broadwell’s IP address. With this, the identity of the person who sent an e-mail or visited a website can be tracked.

联邦调查局还获取了博德维的IP地址。通过该地址，发件人或访问网站者的身份都可以被追踪到。

Someone trying to remain anonymous can hide e-mails by routing them through different servers or using public computers that don’t keep activity logs. But often people make mistakes, leaving their e-mails traceable by investigators.

一些想要匿名的人可以使用不同的服务器，或是那些不记录活动日志的公用电脑来发送邮件。但是人们经常犯错，使自己的邮件能够被调查者追踪到。

With cloud services and more storage capabilities, thousands of pages of e-mails that users think no longer exist may simply be stored out of sight but within easy reach of watchful authorities.

随着云服务的出现以及存储容量的增加，用户以为不存在的成百上千封的电邮，只是被保存在你看不到的地方罢了，而警觉的政府部门则可以轻而易举地获得它们。

In Petraeus’ case, experts believe Google cooperated with authorities to access the e-mail accounts he and Broadwell used.

在彼得雷乌斯事件中，专家相信谷歌与政府部门合作，获取了彼得雷乌斯与博德维的电邮账户。

Google acknowledges that it receives requests from government agencies around the world to “provide information about users of our services and products”, according to a policy statement it posted online.

从谷歌的一份网络政策声明中我们可以获知，谷歌承认收到过全球许多政府机构关于“提供使用谷歌各种服务以及产品的用户信息”的要求。

Of all the free webmail services, Google collects the most data from users of its Gmail service, including IP addresses, key words in e-mail text, information from search queries and webpage visits.

在所有免费电邮服务中，谷歌收集了最为全面Gmail用户数据信息，包括IP地址、电邮内容的关键字、搜索信息和网页访问记录。

So what are the lessons to be drawn from the general’s downfall? First, never cheat. Second, e-mails offer only limited privacy. Once an e-mail is sent, or even just saved as a draft, things are out of your control.

所以，我们可以从这位彼得雷乌斯上将的垮台中学到什么呢？第一，永远不要欺骗。第二，电邮只提供有限的隐私。一旦电邮发出去，哪怕即使是存到草稿箱，一切就由不得你了。