监控之眼：在中国体验人脸识别眼镜
中国郑州——它们待在电线杆上，从街灯的高度向下注视。有些挂在地铁车厢顶棚人们几乎看不到的地方，有些好像是伸着经过加固的长脖子，直对着你的眼睛。
Surveillance cameras are everywhere in China.
监控摄像头在中国随处可见。
I pass more than 200 on my 30-minute commute in Shanghai. After a while, they mostly blend into the background. But when spotting a new one, I wonder about them. Is anyone watching? Is a computer parsing the feed? Is it even on?
在上海，我的30分钟上下班路上有200多个摄像头。久而久之，它们基本上成了环境的一部分。但每当看到一个新的时，就会引起我的兴趣。有人在看吗?有计算机在对收集来的视频进行分析吗?我甚至怀疑这些摄像头开着吗。
Trying to get to the bottom of these questions can be infuriating. Chinese people are often unwilling to talk about their run-ins with the police. And the authorities are usually under standing orders not to talk to foreign journalists about much of anything, let alone cutting-edge technologies that snoop on criminals.
有时候为这些问题找到答案是令人恼火的事情。中国人往往不愿谈论他们与警方之间发生的冲突。有关部门一直有不与外国记者谈任何事情的命令，更别提讨论监控罪犯的尖端技术了。
[Read more on China’s efforts to assemble a vast national surveillance system.]
(请看关于中国大力建造庞大的国家监控系统的报道。)
So when I got the chance to see the world through the eyes of a police camera, it was oddly exhilarating. As it goes with reporting in China, often you just have to show up, camp out and hope for the best. In my case, patience and a hefty dose of luck paid off.
所以，当我有机会从警方摄像头的角度看这个世界时，有一种异常兴奋的感觉。与在中国进行报道一样，通常，你也只能是去现场待一段时间，希望能得到点什么。对我来说，耐心和巨大的运气给我带来了回报。
The opportunity arose during a reporting trip to the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou several months ago. A colleague and I had traveled there to try to learn about facial recognition glasses that the police had been experimenting with ahead of the big Chinese New Year holiday.
机会出现在几个月前去中国中部城市郑州做报道期间。我和一名同事为了解人脸识别眼镜去了郑州，警方一直在中国春节假期前试验这种眼镜。
When we first got to the city’s train station, a police officer gleefully likened the specs to a pair in “Mission Impossible.” But then press officials rebuffed requests to try them. The glasses had been on display, but no longer, they said.
当我们第一次来到郑州火车站时，一名警官正在兴高采烈地把这种眼镜与《碟中谍》(Mission Impossible)中的一副作比较。但随后，媒体官员拒绝了记者试试眼镜的请求。他们说，曾经展出过这些眼镜，但展期已过。
We roamed the cavernous train station, hoping to catch a glimpse of them while taking in the scenes. Often in China, the mundane contains a bit of the absurd.
我们在巨大的火车站里闲逛，在熟悉环境的同时希望能看到它们一眼。在中国，平凡的事物中往往包含着一点荒谬。
On the second floor, the military was decamped to help with crowd control ahead of the holiday. Their green camouflage tents, pitched inside the building, stuck out inside the drab gray station. Outside the camp was a sign warning all who approached that they were entering a battlefield. Below, on the departures floor, janitors had attached mops to the front of motorized scooters, cleaning the large marble floors with the efficiency of a Zamboni.
在火车站的二楼，军队已被派来帮助假期前的人群控制工作。他们搭在大楼里的绿色迷彩帐篷，在单调的灰色车站中特别显眼。军营外有一个标志，警告所有接近的人，他们正在进入战场。在一楼的出站大厅里，清洁工们把拖把安装在机动踏板车的前部，以赞博尼磨冰机的效率在清洗大理石地板。
Within a few hours, we spied Shan Jun, a deputy police chief, who was demonstrating the glasses amid the crowds of travelers heading home for the holiday. It turned out they were still on display for news media, just the state-run kind that Beijing controls.
几个小时后，我们突然看见了派出所副所长单军(音)，他正在向回家过春节的游客们展示这种眼镜。我们后来才知道，眼镜仍在对新闻媒体展出，只不过只对北京控制的官方媒体而已。
We tagged along and caught a break. Mr. Shan, who was affably holding court, gladly handed over the device to try.
我们尾随其后，机会来了。和蔼可亲地给人们讲解的单军很高兴地把这副眼镜交给我们试试。
One of the more dystopian tools of China’s burgeoning surveillance-industrial complex, it was not exactly slick or really all that functional. A small camera is mounted to a pair of sunglasses. The camera is then connected by wire to a minicomputer that looks and works a bit like an oversize smartphone. The device checks the images snapped by the camera against a database. In essence, it’s a moving version of the photo systems that some countries have at customs checkpoints.
这个在中国迅速发展的监控工业复合体中格外有反乌托邦色彩的工具，并不算特别精致或有效。一个小摄像头安在了一副墨镜上。然后把摄像头用电线连接到一台微型电脑上，电脑的样子和工作方式有点像一个超大的智能手机。该设备用一个数据库来检查拍摄的图像。从本质上说，它是一些国家在海关检查站使用的摄像系统的移动版本。
With a bit of squinting and adjustment I found my right eye looking through a view finder like one on an old video camera. First I was instructed to aim it at a female officer. A small rectangle appeared around her head, and after a few seconds, the screen displayed her name and national identification number. I then repeated the process on Mr. Shan.
眯着眼进行了一番调整之后，我发现我的右眼在通过一个取景器看外边，这个取景器有点像老式录像机用的那种。我先是被告知把视线对准一名女警官。一个小矩形出现在她的头像周围，几秒钟后，屏幕上显示出她的名字和身份证号。之后，我对单军重复了这个过程。
Emboldened, I tried the glasses out on a group standing about 20 feet away. For a moment, the glasses got a lock on a man’s face. But then the group noticed me, and the man blocked his face with his hand. The minicomputer failed to register a match before he moved. Seconds later, the people scattered.
有了信心之后，我用站在5、6米外的一群人来测试这副眼镜。有那么一会儿，眼镜锁住了一个男人的脸。但这时，那群人注意到了我，那个男人用手挡住了脸。在他走开之前，小计算机没有在数据库里找到他的名字。几秒钟后，这群人散开了。
Their reaction was somewhat surprising. Chinese people often report that they’re comfortable with government surveillance, and train stations are known to be closely watched. The logic often expressed is that those who are law abiding have nothing to fear.
他们的反应有些出人意料。中国人常说，他们不担心政府的监视，大家都知道，火车站是受到密切监视的地方。人们常这样解释，遵纪守法的人没有什么可害怕的。
The men fleeing from my techno-enhanced gaze clearly felt differently — and I assume they weren’t criminals on the lam.
那些从我的用技术增强的凝视中逃走的人，显然有不同的感受，而且我猜他们不是在逃罪犯。
Having a foreigner like me leering at them was certainly unusual. But later, as I watched the police continue to demonstrate the device, I noticed a similar pattern, if less exaggerated. The curious clustered to check out this brave new tech, but plenty of others strode quickly away, faces turned.
像我这样的外国人盯着他们看当然是不寻常的事情。但后来，我在观察警察继续展示这个装置时，也注意到一个类似的规律，顶多只是没那么夸张。好奇者聚集在一起，想看看这个全新的技术，但也有很多人把脸转过去，很快地走开。
In some ways, a lack of information has conditioned such behavior. The abilities and intentions of the authorities here are rarely clear, and uncertainty is part of the point. The less people know, the more they need to use their imagination. China’s surveillance state is far from perfect, but if people don’t know where it excels and where it breaks down, there’s a better chance they’ll assume it’s working and behave.
从某种角度来说，缺乏信息导致了这种行为。这里的当局的能力和意图很少是明确的，而不确定性正是其中一个目的。人们知道的越少，就越需要靠他们的想象力。中国的监控远非十全十美，但如果人们不知道它的长处与不足，他们就更有可能假设系统是有效的，从而检点自己的行为。
Later, we learned that the press officer had initially rejected our request to see the glasses to avoid unmasking too much about the databases that powered it. Someone from Beijing, the press officer said, had called and said the exposure could show gaps in their new methods for tracking criminals.
后来，我们了解到，那名新闻官员最初拒绝了我们想看眼镜的要求，是为了避免暴露太多有关眼镜背后的数据库的信息。新闻发言人说，有人从北京打来电话说，让记者看眼镜可能会暴露他们追踪罪犯的新方法中的漏洞。
With so much obscurity, many Chinese people see the authorities for what they are — erratic, unrestrained and now equipped with unpredictable new powers. The group in the train station was simply making a prudent choice and giving the police, their goofy electronic glasses and their strange foreign friend wide berth.
在这么琢磨不透的情况下，许多中国人认清了当局的本质——不可靠、无制约，如今又拥有不可预测的新力量。火车站里的那群人只是做出了一个谨慎的选择，对警察、他们傻乎乎的电子眼镜，以及他们奇怪的外国朋友躲远点好。
Many critics call China’s surveillance ambitions Orwellian, and they are. But for China today, the world imagined by Franz Kafka offers a closer vision: bureaucratic, unknowable and ruled by uncertainty as much as fear.
许多批评人士说中国的监控野心是奥威尔式的，这没错。但对目前的中国来说，弗朗茨·卡夫卡(Franz Kafka)想象中的世界是一个更接近的场景：官僚主义、不可知，被不确定性以及恐惧所统治。
