In 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot 14 people in San Bernardino, California. At the time, the terrorist attack was the deadliest the US had suffered since 9/11. The tragedy was followed by a dramatic showdown between the FBI and Apple, the world’s most valuable public company, that highlighted the furious debate about security and privacy in the digital age.
2015年，赛义德•里兹万•法鲁克(Syed Rizwan Farook)和塔什费恩•马利克(Tashfeen Malik)在加州圣贝纳迪诺市开枪杀死了14个人。这当时是美国自2001年9•11事件以来死亡人数最多的一次恐怖袭击。联邦调查局(FBI)与全球价值最高的上市公司苹果(Apple)此后的那场戏剧化对峙，将所有人的目光都聚集到关于数字时代的安全与隐私的激烈辩论上。
Federal agents wanted Apple’s help to hack into Farook’s iPhone. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, refused. The FBI went to court.
FBI探员希望苹果帮助破解法鲁克的iPhone，但苹果首席执行官蒂姆•库克(Tim Cook)拒绝了。FBI为此把苹果告上法庭。
Susan Landau’s new book chooses this remarkable tussle as the entry point to an informative discussion about cryptography in a world where smartphones track our every move and foreign governments use social media to wage information warfare beyond their shores. But just as the stand-off between the FBI and Apple ended without a full resolution of the debate — in the end the US government found another company to break into Farook’s phone — so Landau’s latest work leaves the reader wishing for a deeper reckoning with these complex issues.
苏珊•兰多(Susan Landau)的新书以这场不同寻常的拉锯战为切入点，就如下这样的世界中的密码学展开了发人深省的讨论：智能手机追踪我们的一举一动、外国政府利用社交媒体在海外展开信息战。但正如FBI与苹果的对峙到头来也没有为这场辩论提供解决方案一样——最终美国政府找到另一家公司破解了法鲁克的手机——兰多最新的作品对这些复杂问题的探讨也不够深入。