被妖魔化的黑客 就像女權主義

“The word hacking is like feminism. It has got too much baggage attached.”

“hacking這個詞就像女權主義。它已附帶了太多包袱。”

Of all the things Cal Leeming told me — and he told me a lot of hair-raising stuff about banks’ security flaws — this was one of the things that stayed with me. He does not call himself a hacker, although he almost exactly embodies the stereotype of one. Pale, introverted and with an innate talent for technology, he went to prison for stealing credit card details and now, after turning his life around, runs his own security company. He calls himself a software engineer.

凱爾•利明(Cal Leeming)曾告訴我許多關於銀行安全漏洞的可怕事情，然而上面這句話讓我尤其難以忘懷。他並未稱自己是一名黑客——儘管他幾乎是人們對黑客固有印象的完美化身。面色蒼白的他性格內向，擁有與生俱來的技術天分。他曾因竊取信用卡資料而入獄。如今，華麗轉身後的他運營着自己的安全公司。他把自己稱爲一名軟件工程師。

Back in the 1950s, when the word “hacking” first emerged in connection with an MIT computer club, it simply meant tinkering with computers and was a badge of honour. But when the press began writing about hackers in the 1980s it was usually in the context of criminality, and that link has stuck. For a while there was an attempt to differentiate between hackers and crackers. “Peaceful, law-abiding coders who built things called themselves hackers. Hackers built things, we said, and crackers broke things,” wrote J M Porup, a hacker-turned-tech-reporter in a piece on website Motherboard. But this distinction is not often made clear.

上世紀50年代，“hacking”一詞最早出現在與麻省理工學院(MIT)一個電腦俱樂部有關的語境。當時它只是指鼓搗電腦，帶有榮譽勳章的涵義。然而，上世紀80年代，當媒體開始報道“hacker”（黑客）時，其語境通常是犯罪行爲，這種聯繫已經固化。有那麼一段時間，曾有人企圖將黑客和“潰客”(cracker)區分開來。由黑客轉型的科技報道記者J•M•潑盧浦(J M Porup)在Motherboard網站上撰文寫道：“那些安分、守法、愛動手做東西的編程者自稱黑客。我們說，黑客是做東西的，而潰客是砸爛東西的。”不過，這種區分往往並不被人認真對待。

Calling yourself a hacker can even be dangerous, as Corey Thuen, a software developer found out in 2013 while in dispute with a former employer. The Idaho District Court ordered Mr Thuen’s hard drive to be seized and copied for evidence, a fairly serious privacy intrusion and not routine legal practice. Part of the justification was that Mr Thuen described himself as a hacker.

正如軟件開發者科裏•休恩(Corey Thuen) 2013年在與前僱主的糾紛中所發現的，自稱黑客甚至可能會有危險。愛達荷州地區法院(Idaho District Court)下令沒收並複製休恩的硬盤作爲證據，這是相當嚴重的剝奪隱私行爲，並不是常見的司法實踐，而其理由之一就是休恩自稱黑客。

“The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants — in their own words — are hackers,” wrote the judge. “By labelling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act.”

法官寫道：“法庭做出決定的關鍵要點，源自被告——用其自己的話來說——是黑客的相關證據。通過以這種方式標榜自身，他們實質上已宣佈自己擁有必要的電腦技能和意圖，能夠在公開發布相關代碼的同時，隱藏自己在這一行動中所扮演的角色。”

The case was eventually settled out of court, but the idea that calling yourself a hacker implies some kind of evil intent remains troubling. Opinions were mixed when I asked the FT’s Tech Meets Money Facebook group about hacking. “It implies fast and cheap with disregard to convention or rules. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes not so much,” said Daniel Priestley, a London-based entrepreneur.

該案最終以庭外和解收場，然而那種自稱黑客就隱含着某種罪惡意圖的觀念依然令人不安。當我在英國《金融時報》“當高科技遇到資本”(Tech Meets Money)的Facebook羣裏問到有關hacking的問題時，人們的看法各不相同。倫敦企業家丹尼爾•普里斯特利(Daniel Priestley)表示：“這個詞暗示着快捷和廉價，無視慣例或規則。有時候這很不錯，有時候就不太好了。”

Above all, “hacker” is now a confusing term. Everyone, from a member of a Russian criminal gang stealing credit cards to online political activists and the 14-year-old kid who tinkers with computers, is a “hacker”, yet each one of them has very different motivations and resources.

最重要的是，如今“黑客”是個令人迷惑的詞彙。從竊取信用卡資料的俄羅斯犯罪團伙成員，到網上政治活動人士，以及鼓搗電腦的14歲孩子，都是“黑客”，然而他們每個人做事的動機和手頭擁有的資源極爲不同。

At the same time companies hold “hack days” and “hackathons” during which they brainstorm business ideas, women’s magazine hints and tips column have been rebranded as “lifehacks” and the people who used to be called advertising executives refer to themselves as “growth hackers”.

與此同時，企業舉辦“黑客日”(hack day)和“黑客鬆”(hackathon)之類的活動，其間藉助“頭腦風暴”捕捉業務上的創意；女性雜誌的提示技巧欄目已被重新包裝爲“生活破解”(lifehack)；而那些過去被稱爲廣告主管的人如今自稱“增長黑客”(growth hacker)。

Catherine Bracy, director of community organising at Code for America, even argues anyone can be a “civic hacker”, helping governments to re-energise democracy. Under this definition Benjamin Franklin, inventor and one of the founding fathers of the US (who never filed a patent because he believed all human knowledge should be free) is an archetypal hacker — even though the word had something to do with cutting down trees in his day. The term is maddeningly imprecise.

“爲美國編程”(Code for America)社區組織總監凱瑟琳•佈雷西(Catherine Bracy)甚至提出，任何人都可以成爲“公民黑客”，幫助政府爲民主體制重新注入活力。按照這樣的定義，發明家、美國的開國先賢之一本傑明•富蘭克林(Benjamin Franklin)就是典型的黑客——儘管在他的年代這個詞的含義和砍樹有關。他從來不申請專利，因爲他認爲人類所有的知識都應該免費。簡言之，“黑客”一詞的含糊程度令人發狂。

The battle over the word mirrors the behind-the-scenes struggle of the internet, between those who push the boundaries of what is possible and the institutions that want to secure cyber space for their own purposes.

圍繞這個詞的鬥爭折射出了互聯網幕後的鬥爭：一方是那些致力拓展可能性界限的人，另一方是出於自身目的想要確保網絡空間安全的機構。

Hackers are a problem because, if anything, they are a bit too democratic for many people’s taste. In her essay on Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls, academic Gabriella Coleman likens internet disrupters to the tricksters of mythology. Folkloric figures like Loki and Anansi are the agents of change, but they are also unsettling, frightening, even grotesque. Hackers will take technology forward but they may not be thanked for it.

黑客之所以成爲問題，是因爲（如果說有任何不正常的話）他們對許多人來說有點民主過頭了，令人難以接受。在名爲《電腦怪人、黑客和山精》(Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls)的論文中，學者加布裏埃拉•科爾曼(Gabriella Coleman)將互聯網顛覆者類比成神話裏惡作劇的妖精。洛基(Loki)和阿南西(Anansi)這類民間故事中的人物是變革的推動者，但他們也令人不安、讓人害怕、甚至古怪猙獰。黑客會促進技術進步，但他們也許不會因此受到感謝。

For example, hackers were some of the earliest believers in open-source software — making computer code freely available to be viewed and improved on by anyone. This used to be a troubling concept for companies, which had based businesses on protecting their intellectual property.

比如，有些黑客是開源軟件的最早信徒，這類軟件免費公開源代碼，讓任何人可以查看並作出改進。過去這對企業是個令人不安的概念，因爲這些企業的業務建立在保護知識產權的基礎上。

Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux open source operating system, was for a time the bête noire of business. He was described in 2001 as “cancer” by Microsoft’s then chief Steve Ballmer. But a recent survey found some 78 per cent of companies who had responded ran at least part of their business on open source software. Even Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, has said he “loves Linux” and is moving part of the company’s Azure platform to run on the system. There is a sense of karma about this but 15 years can be a long time to wait for acceptance.

開源操作系統Linux的發明人林納斯•託瓦茲(Linus Torvalds)一度被商界視爲“眼中釘”。2001年他曾被時任微軟(Microsoft)首席執行官史蒂夫•鮑爾默(Steve Ballmer)稱爲“癌症”。然而，最近一次調查表明，迴應調查的企業中，大約78%在開源軟件上運營至少一部分業務。就連微軟新任首席執行官薩蒂亞•納德拉(Satya Nadella)也表示“喜愛Linux”，正在將微軟Azure平臺的一部分遷移到Linux系統上運行。這種峯迴路轉有點宿命感，不過15年等來的接受，時間上可能長了一點。

It is not just Linux that is worthy of redemption. Today Cal Leeming is many things: a businessman, a film-maker, a devoted father and a charity volunteer. A loaded word like “hacker” risks obscuring these other facets. It is no wonder he doesn’t use it.

值得救贖的不僅僅是Linux。今天，凱爾•利明身兼多重身份：商人、電影製片人、全心投入的父親以及慈善事業的志願者。而類似“黑客”這樣含義豐富的詞彙可能掩蓋上述其他方面的身份。難怪他不使用這個稱號。