13．Crypto 密碼
Technology is a beauty. We eagerly adopt its pleasure, preferring to cope with the drawbacks on the morning after. Who can resist innovations like mobile phones and networked computers? They put anyone, anywhere, within earshot, and zip information— whether an expression of love, a medical chart or a plan for a product rollout— around the world in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for eavesdroppers to snap up those messages and conversations en route to their intended receiver. We think we’re whispering, but we’re broadcasting.
In this case, there’s an antidote: cryptography, the use of codes and ciphers to protect information. If you scramble information before it’s sent, eavesdroppers can’t hear what you say or read what you’re written. The good news is that, after decades of struggle against a government opposed to its widespread use, we’ve finally got access to crypto— software that does the scrambling, as well as other functions like “digital signatures” that will authenticate that we are who we say we are in cyberspace. You might not see the crypto, but it’s there, going into action every time your computer tells you it’s going into the secret “secure mode.” What should alarm you is that crypto still isn’t there — in the millions of medical records, credit-card databases. We can attribute that failure that failure to the government’s active opposition.
Nowadays, more and more of the activities once associated with that good old physical world will be performed at our keyboards, phone devices and palmtops and over digital televisions. Crypto lies at the center of this transition, and we’re going to ask a lot of it over the next few years. Will our e-mail and phone systems ever have strong encryption and digital signatures built in? Will feats of crypto really send “digital cash” to replace the paper money, and enable us to spend it in stores?
The issues in the crypto-battle, the first great war of the digital age, were more straightforward. As people cozied up to digital communications, and e-commerce became a force in the economy, the need for crypto’s near-magical power of encryption and authentication became red hot. But those at the helm of the government focused not on the benefits, but the dangers— the fear that terrorists or drug dealers would use this digital shield. Ultimately, the question boiled down to this: in an attempt to deny those dangerous few, were we all to be deprived of the tools of privacy?
科技是一位美女。我們急于得到它的青睞，寧愿遷就不久以后出現(xiàn)的倒退。誰能夠抵制像移動電話和聯(lián)網(wǎng)計算機這樣的革新?它們使任何人在任何地方都能被聽到。把壓縮信息——無論是愛的表白、藥方還是一個產(chǎn)品的公開展覽計劃——在瞬間傳遍世界。不幸的是，竊聽者很容易在途中攔截這些信息和對話。我們以為我們在竊竊私語，實際上我們在廣播。
在這種情況下，有一種解決辦法：密碼學，用密碼保護信息。如果你在信息發(fā)出去之前倒換頻率，竊聽者就不能聽到你說什么或看到你寫了什么。有一個好消息，在與反對密碼學廣泛使用的政府作了幾十年的抗爭后，我們終于可以使用密碼——倒換頻率的軟件，和其他能在電腦化空間中確認我們是我們所聲稱的人的功能，諸如“數(shù)碼簽名”。你看不到密碼，但它是存在的。每次你的電腦告訴你它將進入秘密的“安全模式”中時，密碼就起作用了。但是必須警告你在成百上千萬的病歷卡、信用卡數(shù)據(jù)庫中還沒有設置密碼。沒有這樣做應歸咎于政府的大力反對。
現(xiàn)在，越來越多曾經(jīng)與那個古老的美好的現(xiàn)實世界相聯(lián)系的活動將通過我們的鍵盤、電話設備、掌上電腦和數(shù)字化電視進行。密碼在這種轉(zhuǎn)變中處于中心地位。在今后的幾年中我們對它的需求量將為很大。我們的電子郵件和電話系統(tǒng)將有很強的譯碼和數(shù)字簽名功能嗎?密碼將真能發(fā)送“數(shù)字現(xiàn)金”代替紙幣，使我們能在商店里使用它嗎?
數(shù)字時代的第一次大戰(zhàn)——密碼戰(zhàn)——中的問題更為直接。當人們盡力迎合數(shù)字交流，電子商務成為經(jīng)濟中的一支力量時，對于密碼近乎魔術的譯碼和確認功能的需求日益迫切。但是那些受政府控制的人們不把目光放在利潤上而是放在風險上——害怕恐怖主義者和販毒者會使用數(shù)字盾牌。最后，這個問題簡化為：難道為了防備那些危險的少數(shù)分子，我們都要被剝奪保護隱私的工具?
★1).Technology is like an art, which everybody including scientists loves.-N
★2).In the passage, drawbacks means the messages we send may be intercepted or overheard by non-intended receivers.-R
★3).With the widespread use of digital communications and e-commerce, encryption will become very urgent.-R
★4).We have finally got the crypto in our computer but not in medical records and credit-card databases.-R
★5).More and more activities performed in the physical world will be replaced by activities in the electronic world.-R
★6).The passage clearly concludes that we need a new organization to popularize encryption and authentication.-N
★7).Encryption can protect privacy, but can stop terrorism and drug dealing as well.-W
Technology is a beauty. We eagerly adopt its pleasure, preferring to cope with the drawbacks on the morning after. Who can resist innovations like mobile phones and networked computers? They put anyone, anywhere, within earshot, and zip information— whether an expression of love, a medical chart or a plan for a product rollout— around the world in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for eavesdroppers to snap up those messages and conversations en route to their intended receiver. We think we’re whispering, but we’re broadcasting.
In this case, there’s an antidote: cryptography, the use of codes and ciphers to protect information. If you scramble information before it’s sent, eavesdroppers can’t hear what you say or read what you’re written. The good news is that, after decades of struggle against a government opposed to its widespread use, we’ve finally got access to crypto— software that does the scrambling, as well as other functions like “digital signatures” that will authenticate that we are who we say we are in cyberspace. You might not see the crypto, but it’s there, going into action every time your computer tells you it’s going into the secret “secure mode.” What should alarm you is that crypto still isn’t there — in the millions of medical records, credit-card databases. We can attribute that failure that failure to the government’s active opposition.
Nowadays, more and more of the activities once associated with that good old physical world will be performed at our keyboards, phone devices and palmtops and over digital televisions. Crypto lies at the center of this transition, and we’re going to ask a lot of it over the next few years. Will our e-mail and phone systems ever have strong encryption and digital signatures built in? Will feats of crypto really send “digital cash” to replace the paper money, and enable us to spend it in stores?
The issues in the crypto-battle, the first great war of the digital age, were more straightforward. As people cozied up to digital communications, and e-commerce became a force in the economy, the need for crypto’s near-magical power of encryption and authentication became red hot. But those at the helm of the government focused not on the benefits, but the dangers— the fear that terrorists or drug dealers would use this digital shield. Ultimately, the question boiled down to this: in an attempt to deny those dangerous few, were we all to be deprived of the tools of privacy?
科技是一位美女。我們急于得到它的青睞，寧愿遷就不久以后出現(xiàn)的倒退。誰能夠抵制像移動電話和聯(lián)網(wǎng)計算機這樣的革新?它們使任何人在任何地方都能被聽到。把壓縮信息——無論是愛的表白、藥方還是一個產(chǎn)品的公開展覽計劃——在瞬間傳遍世界。不幸的是，竊聽者很容易在途中攔截這些信息和對話。我們以為我們在竊竊私語，實際上我們在廣播。
在這種情況下，有一種解決辦法：密碼學，用密碼保護信息。如果你在信息發(fā)出去之前倒換頻率，竊聽者就不能聽到你說什么或看到你寫了什么。有一個好消息，在與反對密碼學廣泛使用的政府作了幾十年的抗爭后，我們終于可以使用密碼——倒換頻率的軟件，和其他能在電腦化空間中確認我們是我們所聲稱的人的功能，諸如“數(shù)碼簽名”。你看不到密碼，但它是存在的。每次你的電腦告訴你它將進入秘密的“安全模式”中時，密碼就起作用了。但是必須警告你在成百上千萬的病歷卡、信用卡數(shù)據(jù)庫中還沒有設置密碼。沒有這樣做應歸咎于政府的大力反對。
現(xiàn)在，越來越多曾經(jīng)與那個古老的美好的現(xiàn)實世界相聯(lián)系的活動將通過我們的鍵盤、電話設備、掌上電腦和數(shù)字化電視進行。密碼在這種轉(zhuǎn)變中處于中心地位。在今后的幾年中我們對它的需求量將為很大。我們的電子郵件和電話系統(tǒng)將有很強的譯碼和數(shù)字簽名功能嗎?密碼將真能發(fā)送“數(shù)字現(xiàn)金”代替紙幣，使我們能在商店里使用它嗎?
數(shù)字時代的第一次大戰(zhàn)——密碼戰(zhàn)——中的問題更為直接。當人們盡力迎合數(shù)字交流，電子商務成為經(jīng)濟中的一支力量時，對于密碼近乎魔術的譯碼和確認功能的需求日益迫切。但是那些受政府控制的人們不把目光放在利潤上而是放在風險上——害怕恐怖主義者和販毒者會使用數(shù)字盾牌。最后，這個問題簡化為：難道為了防備那些危險的少數(shù)分子，我們都要被剝奪保護隱私的工具?
★1).Technology is like an art, which everybody including scientists loves.-N
★2).In the passage, drawbacks means the messages we send may be intercepted or overheard by non-intended receivers.-R
★3).With the widespread use of digital communications and e-commerce, encryption will become very urgent.-R
★4).We have finally got the crypto in our computer but not in medical records and credit-card databases.-R
★5).More and more activities performed in the physical world will be replaced by activities in the electronic world.-R
★6).The passage clearly concludes that we need a new organization to popularize encryption and authentication.-N
★7).Encryption can protect privacy, but can stop terrorism and drug dealing as well.-W