2024年3月31日发(作者：)

2003年 Text 1

Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American

spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in the World War II

and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information.

Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the “great game”

of espionage —— spying as a “profession.” These days the Net, which

has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending

mail, is reshaping Donovan’s vocation as well.

如果Wild Bill Donovan 当时有互联网的话他肯定会喜欢网络的。这位美

国间谍大王对情报格外着迷，他曾经在第二次世界大战时建立了战略服务办公

室，后来又为中央情报局的成立打下了基础。Donovan 相信，在谍报的“伟大游

戏”当中，即间谍这一“职业”当中，可以使用任何可利用的手段。如今，互联

网已经改变了像买书和寄信这样的日常活动，也正在改变Donovan曾经从事的这

个职业。

注：其实espionage 和 spying是一个意思，spying是对espionage的

解释，espionage主要用于政府军事公司团体，相对正式些，可以翻译成“谍

报”；spying是普通用法，主要指公司或个人，所以可以译为“间谍”，“密

探”均可。

The latest revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading

other gentlemen’s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going

on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has

given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call

it “open-source intelligence,” and as the Net grows, it is becoming

increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could

compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was

a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear

advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.

最近的这次革命性的改变不仅仅是一个人偷看他人电子邮件的问题，这样的

电子间谍活动已经存在了数十年。在过去的三四年中，国际互联网已经催生出一

个可称为点击间谍的完整产业。间谍们把它称为“开源情报”（直译为：“公开

来源情报”）。随着互联网的增长，这样的情报变得越来越有影响力。1995年

中央情报局举办了一个竞赛，看谁能够收集到关于“布隆迪”的最多信息。以绝

对优势获胜的是来自弗吉尼亚的一家小公司，名为“公开来源解决方案”，它的

明显优势是它对电子世界的精通。

注： 所谓开源情报是指通过对公开的信息或其它资源进行分析后所得到的

情报。

Among the firms making the biggest splash in the new world is

Straitford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin,

Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering

nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm

McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at

.

在这些公司中，引起这一新领域最大轰动的是一个叫Straitford的公司，

它是得克萨斯州奥斯汀市的一个私人情报分析公司。它通过向诸如“McDermott

国际”这样的能源公司出售情报来赚钱（情报涉及包括从智利到俄罗斯等许多国

家）。它的许多预测可以到在线查到。

Straitford president George Friedman says he sees the online world

as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection

and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. Last week his firm was busy

vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting

a crisis in Ukraine. “As soon as that report runs, we’ll suddenly get

500 new Internet sign-ups from Ukraine,” says Friedman, a former

political science professor. “And we’ll hear back from some of them.”

Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be

difficult to tell good information from bad. That’s where Straitford

earns its keep.

该公司的总裁George Friedman 说，他把网络世界视为情报收集和情报发

布两方面相互增强的工具，这是间谍头目的梦想。上周，他的公司正在从远在世

界的另一角落收集零散的信息，并预测到乌克兰将发生一场危机。“一旦这个报

道发布，我们会从乌克兰突然新增500个浏览用户，”Friedman ，一位前政治

学教授说，“我们将得到他们某些人的反馈。”当然公开来源的间谍活动的确有

它的风险，因为区分真假信息是非常困难的。（但）这正是 Straitford 公司盈

利的地方。

Friedman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin. Several of his

staff members have military-intelligence backgrounds. He sees the firm’s

outsider status as the key to its success. Straitford’s briefs don’t

sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid