巴拿馬文件和媒體大揭祕時代的來臨

Four years passed between The New York Times’s first article based on the Pentagon Papers and the end of the Vietnam War.

從《紐約時報》根據五角大樓泄密文件發出的第一篇報道，到越南戰爭結束，用了四年。

Two years passed between The Washington Post’s first story establishing Richard M. Nixon’s link to the Watergate burglary and Nixon’s resignation from the presidency.

從《華盛頓郵報》將理查德·M·尼克松(Richard M. Nixon)與水門竊聽事件建立關聯的第一篇報道發出，到尼克松辭任美國總統，用了兩年。

Last week, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson of Iceland couldn’t make it 48 hours before having to step aside after the disclosure of the shady bank dealings contained in the Panama Papers, some of which involve him.

上週，隱藏在巴拿馬文件中的可疑銀行交易被曝光不到48小時，與之有牽連的冰島總理西格門迪 爾·戴維·貢勞格鬆(Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson)就被迫遞交了辭呈。

O.K., I know: It’s just Iceland, remote and adorably tiny. Who knew it had a government position higher than forstodumadur Fiskistofa (director of Fisheries)? Kidding, Iceland, kidding! I understand how you’re at the center of something bigger than both your country and mine, and I promise that you won’t be mad at me by the time you’re done reading this.

好吧，我知道：這只是冰島，一個遙遠而小巧的國家。誰會知道它有一個比漁業部門主管(forstodumadur Fiskistofa)還大的政府職位呢？開玩笑，冰島的朋友，是開玩笑！我知道你們處在比你的國家和我的國家都大的事件中心，我保證等你看完全文，肯定就不會再因我那句玩笑話而憤慨。

Because while we Americans were transfixed by the latest plot turns in our presidential campaign, you and the rest of the world were living through the biggest corporate data leak in history. It had reverberations not only in Iceland, but in China, Britain, Russia, Argentina and some 50 other countries.

因爲，當我們美國人因本國總統大選的最新情節轉折而目瞪口呆時，你們和全球其他國家的人正在親身見證史上規模最大的一起企業數據泄露事件。它不止在冰島引起巨大反響，也在中國、英國、俄羅斯、阿根廷和其他大約50個國家產生了震動。

But the leak signaled something else that was a big deal but went unheralded: The official WikiLeaks-ization of mainstream journalism; the next step in the tentative merger between the Fourth Estate, with its relatively restrained conventional journalists, and the Fifth Estate, with the push-the-limits ethos of its blogger, hacker and journo-activist cohort, in the era of gargantuan data breaches.

但泄密事件本身還呈現了另外一個非常重大但又不曾被提起的問題：主流新聞報道正式“維基解密化”(WikiLeaks-ization)；這是以相對受限制的傳統新聞記者爲主的“第四階級”(Fourth Estate)，和以挑戰道德邊界的博客作者、黑客和新聞活動人士等爲代表的“第五階級”(Fifth Estate)，在海量數據泄露時代組成臨時聯盟後的下一步行動。

Back at the dawn of this new, Big Breach journalism, The Times’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller, wondered aloud in the paper’s Sunday magazine whether “The War Logs,” a huge cache of confidential war records and diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in conjunction with The Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and others, represented “some kind of cosmic triumph of transparency.” He concluded, “I suspect we have not reached a state of information anarchy, at least not yet.” That was in 2011.

在這股新的大泄密(Big Breach)新聞潮流剛開啓的時候，時任《紐約時報》執行總編的比爾·凱勒(Bill Keller)曾在時報的《週日雜誌》(Sunday)上發文，就維基解密與《紐約時報》、《明鏡週刊》(Der Spiegel)、《衛報》(The Guardian)和其他媒體發佈含大量機密戰爭記錄和外交電報的“戰爭日誌”，是否代表着“追求信息透明的某種巨大勝利”，做出了他的思考。他的結論是，“我想我們並沒有達到完全的信息公開，至少現在還沒有。”當時是2011年。

Five years later, it is safe to say that we are getting much closer. This is changing the course of world history, fast. It is also changing the rules for mainstream journalists in the fierce business of unearthing secrets, and for the government and corporate officials in the fiercer business of keeping them.

五年之後，可以肯定地說，我們距離那個目標近了很多。這種變化正在快速改變世界歷史的進程。而在殘酷的揭祕報道領域，以及更加殘酷的政府和企業保密領域，規則也在被改變。

Any early questions about the effect of WikiLeaks’s trove were answered a few months after Mr. Keller’s article appeared, when WikiLeaks won credit for helping to spark the Arab Spring. It revealed a cable highlighting the opulence and self-dealing of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and his family, enraging his already restive and economically pinched public. His ouster shortly followed.

在凱勒那篇文章發出幾個月後，針對維基解密泄露重要信息的效力所產生的各種疑問都得到了答案。當時，維基解密因幫助激發了“阿拉伯之春”革命而獲得肯定。該機構曝光了一份機密電報，揭露突尼斯總統宰因·阿比丁·本·阿里(Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali)及其家人假公濟私的行爲和奢華的生活，激怒了在經濟上備受壓迫、本已躁動不安的突尼斯民衆。本·阿里很快被罷黜。

Last year, a federal judge doubted the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records after the program was disclosed in data leaked by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden. Mr. Snowden’s information also helped set up this year’s standoff between Apple and the Justice Department over iPhone encryption.

去年，在前美國國家安全局(National Security Agency)情報承包商愛德華·J·斯諾登(Edward J. Snowden)泄露數據，曝光該機構大量收集美國人通話記錄的項目之後，一名聯邦法官對安全局的行爲是否符合憲法提出了質疑。斯諾登提供的信息也部分導致蘋果公司今年與司法部(Justice Department)就是否爲之破解iPhone手機而僵持不下。

Now we have the 11.5 million files known as the Panama Papers, based on documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that detail shell companies and tax shelters used by the world’s wealthy and powerful. They are causing political heartburn — and potentially worse — for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and yes, Iceland.

現在，我們掌握了數量達1150萬份的巴拿馬文件。這些從名爲莫薩克-馮塞卡(Mossack Fonseca)的巴拿馬律所泄露的文件，詳細記錄了世界各地的權貴使用的空殼公司和避稅手段。它們正在成爲一些政治人物的心病，而對俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾·V·普京(Vladimir V. Putin)、英國首相戴維·卡梅倫(David Cameron)來說，情況可能會更糟，當然，也包括冰島。

But for everyday mopes who file their taxes by the letter of the law, as opposed to through its loopholes, the biggest shocker was how much tax avoidance contained in the Panama Papers was legal, as Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept. That is a lit match to the political tinder of the increasingly global view that the game is rigged — something that’s at the heart of the appeals of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump here at home.

但是，就像格倫·格林沃爾德(Glenn Greenwald)在新聞網站The Intercept上的文章所寫的，對於依法納稅而非利用其漏洞避稅的普通人而言，最大的震驚之處在於，巴拿馬文件中的避稅行爲竟然有那麼多是合法的。它引爆了一種日益全球化的觀念，即一切都是被操縱的——這也是伯尼·桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)和唐納德·特朗普(Donald Trump)能在本國集聚人氣的一個關鍵原因。

It’s the stuff journalists live for. But the deep data sets that are making these sorts of revelations possible are presenting new conundrums for reporters and editors more accustomed to banging the phones and interviewing live human beings.

這是記者們渴盼的素材。但讓這類泄密事件得以實現的深層數據，也在給習慣於狂打電話、採訪活生生的對象的記者和編輯們帶來新的難題。

This issue initially surfaced in the WikiLeaks “War Logs” collaboration. In their carefully constructed stories with WikiLeaks, The Times, The Guardian and other partners redacted the names of sensitive sources mentioned in the documents. But later, some WikiLeaks-held reports spilled out online with names of sensitive sources, drawing accusations that lives were put at risk.

這個問題在最早與維基解密就“戰爭日誌”展開合作時就暴露出來了。在精心謀篇佈局的多篇維基解密報道中，《紐約時報》和《衛報》及其他合作伙伴對文件中提到的敏感信源的名字進行了塗黑處理。但後來，維基解密持有的一些報道散佈到網上，將敏感信源的名字暴露了出來，被指責危及了他人的生命。

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and his supporters have noted that no known physical harm came from any of it. But none of this helped the “War Logs” source, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), the Army private who received a 35-year prison sentence on charges of violating the Espionage Act. The sentence was part the United States government’s aggressive attempts to put this Big Breach era to an end. Fat chance.

維基解密的創始人朱利安·阿桑奇(Julian Assange)及其支持者表示，並不能確定有哪篇報道真的造成了任何人身傷害。但是它們顯然沒給“戰爭日誌”的信源——二等兵切爾西·曼寧（Chelsea Manning，之前名爲布拉德利·曼寧[Bradley Manning]）帶來什麼好處。他因觸犯反間諜法(Espionage Act)的指控被判處35年監禁。這項判決是美國政府終結大泄密時代的努力之一。他們成功的希望不大。

As a group, investigative journalists and their sources operate in grave fear of jail time, but not as much as they fear being cowed out of important stories by the government.

調查記者及其信源作爲一個團隊是擔着入獄的風險在做事，但相比之下，他們更擔心自己因政府恐嚇而放棄報道重大新聞。

Things can be trickier when the data belongs to corporations. Consider the Sony Pictures Entertainment hacking, said to have been perpetrated by North Korea in a bid to scuttle the Sony film spoofing the country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. Reporters found some juicy tidbits in executive emails. But they were also, as the Sony lawyer David Boies claimed, unwittingly helping “a nation state using the intrusion to attempt to intimidate and suppress the distribution of a film.”

當所泄露信息屬於企業時，情況可能就更加複雜。想想索尼電影娛樂公司(Sony Pictures Entertainment)遭遇網絡襲擊一事——據說是朝鮮爲阻止索尼公司上映嘲諷其最高領導人金正恩(Kim Jong-un)的影片。在被曝光的索尼高管郵件中，記者們發現了一些花邊信息，並予以報道。但就像索尼公司的律師戴維·博伊斯(David Boies)所稱，他們也是在無意識地幫助“一個國家利用這次電腦入侵，恐嚇索尼公司，阻止它發行一部影片。”

Mr. Boies got only so far in his attempt to convince the news media that they were legally bound to ignore the data, and delete any they had downloaded. But, he told me, the more reporting gets away from serving an obvious public interest, “the more problematic” it becomes to publish information that was acquired illegally.

博伊斯希望讓新聞媒體相信，它們在法律上有責任忽略這些泄密信息，並刪除所有已經下載的文件，但他也只能做到這麼多。不過，他曾告訴我，新聞報道越偏離於服務顯而易見的公衆利益的方向，發佈通過非法手段獲取的信息就“越成問題”。

The organizers of the Panama Papers project, at the nonprofit International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said they kept that in mind as they pursued the leads in the database of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which says the information was hacked. When I visited the consortium’s Washington office on Friday, its director, Gerard Ryle, told me he did not know if the data was hacked. But he pointed me to the writing atop the big white board laying out the Panama Papers’ production schedule: “Is an issue of global concern?” (A: Yes.)

在非營利機構國際調查記者同盟(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)工作的巴拿馬文件項目的多名組織者表示，在從莫薩克-馮塞卡律所泄露的數據庫中尋找調查線索時，他們一直謹記着這一點。上述律所表示，那些數據是被黑客竊取。當我週五拜訪記者同盟位於華盛頓的辦公室時，該機構主任傑拉德·賴爾(Gerard Ryle)告訴我，他不知道這些數據是否是被非法竊取。但他指給我看列在大寫字板頂部的巴拿馬文件報道計劃表，其中寫道：是一個全球關注的問題嗎？（答案：是的。）

Taking some cues from the Sony and WikiLeaks cases, Mr. Ryle said his consortium had been extra careful not to make all of its data public, especially the personal information of nonpublic figures, playing a gatekeeper role.

賴爾表示，因爲從索尼和維基解密事件中吸取了教訓，他的機構一直非常注意不公開所有數據，尤其是非公衆人物的個人信息，而是扮演一個把關人的角色。

Referring to WikiLeaks, Mr. Ryle said, “We’re trying to reclaim ground that they stole — or, they took,” which mainstream journalism allowed because “we got lazy and sloppy and arrogant about what we were supposed to do: shine light into dark places.”

在談到維基解密時，賴爾說，“我們在試圖拿回被他們奪取——或說拿走的陣地，”此前主流媒體給了他們可乘之機，“因爲我們變得懶惰、草率而又傲慢，忽略了自己原本該做的事：照亮黑暗的地方。”

Not everyone is thrilled with this. WikiLeaks wrote in a tweet: “If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism.”

有的人對此是不能苟同的。維基解密的一條推文就寫道：“如果你過濾了99%的文件，你做的就是1%的報道。”