Netflix的新記錄片 《大黑客》，曝光了當下數字時代無處不在， 卻難以感知的個人信息風險。
雖然川普已經在位子上穩穩地坐了3年多，並且正在爭取連任，關於16年大選，社交網絡顛覆性誤導作用的猜測和調查，從未停歇。《大黑客》 中通過兩個人物，重新講述這個謎。
一個是教傳媒的卡羅爾教授，當年他發現自己的個人身份信息被濫用後，告到了英國法庭，追查他個人信息如何被獲取，交易，和使用。雖然最終沒有結果，至少劍橋分析這一川普競選團隊背後的數據公司現了形。
另一個是劍橋分析公司的科學家凱撒女士，她和她的團隊正是那場社交競選戰役背後的算法創造者。“數據的價值已經超過了石油”，是她在片中最震撼人心的言論。
紀錄片展示了謎團：當你在手機上做的一切操作被記錄時，你的手機無需被監聽；但卻無法揭示真相。一方面因爲科技巨頭們設計的算法太複雜，並且故意轉移關鍵證據。另一方面，那裏也缺乏對數據使用的保護法令，數據一直被認爲是可以被免費獲取和使用的，不得已，教授都只能求助於歐洲法，因爲他的數據曾在那裏被處理。
影片前兩週才上市，可惜它還沒有傳到國內來。
同樣的數據擔憂，在我國一樣嚴重。多數手機應用，無論是掃描個文件，查個植物名，還是評論一個美食，常常要求獲取地理位置、查看相冊，甚至獲取通訊錄，或進行人臉識別對比。所欲何爲？ 顯然，數據的安全，無法依賴科技來解決。 關於個人信息的立法，在將來幾十年，必有艱苦的爭論。
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下面是Techcrunch專欄記者寫的一篇簡介。用詞精美，句式繁複，特此翻譯如下。-
The Great Hack tells us data corrupts
Natasha Lomas@riptari
Cambridge Analytica probe
This week professor David Carroll, whose dogged search for answers to how his personal data was misused plays a focal role in The Great Hack: Netflix’s documentary tackling the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, quipped that perhaps a follow up would be more punitive for the company than the $5BN FTC fine released the same day.
The documentary — which we previewed ahead of its general release Wednesday — does an impressive job of articulating for a mainstream audience the risks for individuals and society of unregulated surveillance capitalism, despite the complexities involved in the invisible data ‘supply chain’ that feeds the beast. Most obviously by trying to make these digital social emissions visible to the viewer — as mushrooming pop-ups overlaid on shots of smartphone users going about their everyday business, largely unaware of the pervasive tracking it enables.
Facebookis unlikely to be a fan of the treatment. In its own crisis PR around the Cambridge Analytica scandal it has sought to achieve the opposite effect; making it harder to join the data-dots embedded in its ad platform by seeking to deflect blame, bury key details and bore reporters and policymakers to death with reams of irrelevant detail — in the hope they might shift their attention elsewhere.
Data protection itself isn’t a topic that naturally lends itself to glamorous thriller treatment, of course. No amount of slick editing can transform the close and careful scrutiny of political committees into seat-of-the-pants viewing for anyone not already intimately familiar with the intricacies being picked over. And yet it’s exactly such thoughtful attention to detail that democracy demands. Without it we are all, to put it proverbially, screwed.
The Great Hack shows what happens when vital detail and context are cheaply ripped away at scale, via socially sticky content delivery platforms run by tech giants that never bothered to sweat the ethical detail of how their ad targeting tools could be repurposed by malign interests to sew social discord and/or manipulate voter opinion en mass.
Or indeed used by an official candidate for high office in a democratic society that lacks legal safeguards against data misuse.
But while the documentary packs in a lot over an almost two-hour span, retelling the story of Cambridge Analytica’srole in the 2016 Trump presidential election campaign; exploring links to the UK’s Brexit leave vote; and zooming out to show a little of the wider impact of social media disinformation campaigns on various elections around the world, the viewer is left with plenty of questions. Not least the ones Carroll repeats towards the end of the film: What information had Cambridge Analytica amassed on him? Where did they get it from? What did they use it for? — apparently resigning himself to never knowing. The disgraced data firm chose declaring bankruptcy and folding back into its shell vs handing over the stolen goods and its algorithmic secrets.
There’s no doubt over the other question Carroll poses early on the film — could he delete his information? The lack of control over what’s done with people’s information is the central point around which the documentary pivots. The key warning being there’s no magical cleansing fire that can purge every digitally copied personal thing that’s put out there.
And while Carroll is shown able to tap into European data rights — purely by merit of Cambridge Analytica having processed his data in the UK — to try and get answers, the lack of control holds true in the US. Here, the absence of a legal framework to protect privacy is shown as the catalyzing fuel for the ‘great hack’ — and also shown enabling the ongoing data-free-for-all that underpins almost all ad-supported, Internet-delivered services. tl;dr: Your phone doesn’t need to listen to if it’s tracking everything else you do with it.
The film’s other obsession is the breathtaking scale of the thing. One focal moment is when we hear another central character, Cambridge Analytica’s Brittany Kaiser, dispassionately recounting how data surpassed oil in value last year — as if that’s all the explanation needed for the terrible behavior on show.
“Data’s the most valuable asset on Earth,” she monotones. The staggering value of digital stuff is thus fingered as an irresistible, manipulative force also sucking in bright minds to work at data firms like Cambridge Analytica — even at the expense of their own claimed political allegiances, in the conflicted case of Kaiser.
If knowledge is power and power corrupts, the construction can be refined further to ‘data corrupts’, is the suggestion.
The filmmakers linger long on Kaiser which can seem to humanize her — as they show what appear vulnerable or intimate moments. Yet they do this without ever entirely getting under her skin or allowing her role in the scandal to be fully resolved.
She’s often allowed to tell her narrative from behind dark glasses and a hat — which has the opposite effect on how we’re invited to perceive her. Questions about her motivations are never far away. It’s a human mystery linked to Cambridge Analytica’s money-minting algorithmic blackbox.
Nor is there any attempt by the filmmakers to mine Kaiser for answers themselves. It’s a documentary that spotlights mysteries and leaves questions hanging up there intact. From a journalist perspective that’s an inevitable frustration. Even as the story itself is much bigger than any one of its constituent parts.
It’s hard to imagine how Netflixcould commission a straight up sequel to The Great Hack, given its central framing of Carroll’s data quest being combined with key moments of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Large chunks of the film are comprised from capturing scrutiny and reactions to the story unfolding in real-time.
But in displaying the ruthlessly transactional underpinnings of social platforms where the world’s smartphone users go to kill time, unwittingly trading away their agency in the process, Netflix has really just begun to open up the defining story of our time.
《大黑客》告訴我們數據腐敗
劍橋分析公司探祕
本週，在Netflix出品的影片《大黑客》中，戴維·卡羅爾教授對他個人信息被濫用問題的不懈追問成爲了焦點，在這部關於臉書-劍橋分析公司數據醜聞的紀錄片中，他打趣說，或許對影片的一個贊同比同天宣佈的$ 50億美元美國貿易委員會罰款對這些公司更有懲罰性。
這部紀錄片-- 我們在星期三正式宣發前已經試看過–令人印象深刻，爲主流觀衆闡明瞭不受管制的監視資本主義對個人和社會的風險性，儘管那些飼養巨獸的無形數據“供應鏈”的複雜性。最明顯的是爭取讓觀者清楚的看到數字社交的發散–在智能手機使用的日常照片上用碎片如雨般發射的方式，顯示用戶大多數意識不到的那些廣泛的跟蹤。
Facebook不太可能成爲這種手法的粉絲。在它自己應對劍橋分析醜聞的危機公關中，積極的營造相反的印象;通過試圖轉移責任，讓人們更難彙集內嵌於它的廣告平臺的埋點，掩埋關鍵細節並用大量的無關細節把記者和政策制定者們煩到死–以他們能將注意力轉移到其他地方。
當然，數據保護本身並不是一個天然地引起極度恐慌的話題。再高超的剪輯也無法把政治委員會抽絲剝繭的審覈過程變成通俗易懂的畫面，對於那些原來對這裏的盤根錯節不太熟悉的人來說。然而，這種對細節的仔細推敲正是民主所需要的。如果沒有它，顯而易見地，我們所有人都將玩完。
《大黑客》揭示了當重要細節和背景信息被大規模廉價地獲取的後果，通過科技巨頭們運營的具有社交粘性的內容輸送平臺，而巨頭們從來都不願披露那些，關於他們的廣告定位工具如何被惡勢力利用，以製造社會不和諧及/或操縱選民的集體意志，等等的道德細節。
或者確實如一位民主黨高層職位的正式候選人所使用的那樣，對數據濫用缺乏律法屏障。
但是，雖然這部紀錄片在近兩個小時的片長內囊括了很多內容，重新講述劍橋分析公司在2016年特朗普總統競選活動中的角色;探索與英國脫歐投票的關聯；並粗略的展示了社交媒體的假消息廣告對世界範圍內各種選舉的更廣泛地影響，觀者仍然被留下大量的疑問。至少卡羅爾在電影結束時重複地問：劍橋分析公司積攢了哪些有關他的信息？他們從哪裏得到的？他們用它來幹什麼？ - 顯然他不甘心，但始終無法得到答案。這家不光彩的數據公司選擇了宣佈破產，躲回殼中，而不是交出他偷到的物資及算法祕密。
卡羅爾在電影剛開始時拋出的另一個問題是毫無疑問的- 他可以刪除自己的信息嗎？對個人信息的使用缺乏控制是紀錄片想要展現的核心點。最主要的警告是沒有什麼神奇的淨化火可以一把清除這些數字化存儲的被攫取的個人信息。
並且，雖然片中顯示卡羅爾能夠利用歐洲的數據權 - 純粹是因爲劍橋分析公司在英國處理過他的數據–來爭取得到答案，在美國（對數據）缺乏控制權卻是現實。在這裏，缺乏保護隱私的法律框架顯然成爲了“大黑客”的催化劑–並且被爆出造成了數據對所有人持續免費，奠定了幾乎所有廣告支持的，通過互聯網提供的服務的基礎。你的手機不需要監聽，如果它跟蹤所有你用它做的其他事情。
本片另一個令人着迷的地方是那些事情讓人吃驚的規模。一個高潮片段是當我們聽到影片的另一箇中心人物，劍橋分析公司的布列塔尼凱撒，冷靜地敘述數據是如何在去年超過石油的價值 - 好像這就是對那些可怕行爲所需的全部解釋。
“數據是地球上最有價值的資產，”她語氣平淡地說。因此，數字資料的驚人價值被視爲一種不可抗拒的，可操控的力量，也吸引那些聰明的腦袋來爲劍橋分析這樣的數據公司工作–甚至放棄了他們曾聲稱的政治忠誠，Kaiser的就是這麼一個矛盾的例子。
如果知識就是權力而權力腐敗了，那麼解釋可以進一步提煉爲“數據腐敗”，影片建議說。
影片的製作者們在凱撒這個人物上花了很長時間，試圖讓她更有人情味–正如他們表現的那些看似脆弱或溫情的時刻。然而，他們這樣做卻完全沒有伸入她的內在，或者讓她在醜聞中扮演的角色得到充分的解釋。
她常常被允許從一副黑眼鏡和帽子後面進行她的自述 - 這對我們被邀請來了解她的初衷產生了相反的效果。質疑她的動機的疑問從未遠離。這是與劍橋分析的賺錢算法黑盒子有關的人的祕密。
電影製作人也沒有試圖挖據凱撒讓自己得到答案。這是一部紀錄片，凸顯了謎團，然後將問題完整的留在那裏。從記者的角度來看，這是一種不可避免的敗筆。即使因爲故事本身比任何一個組成部分都要大得多。
很難想象Netflix將如何製作The Great Hack的續集，因爲影片的中心線即卡羅爾Carrol對數據的質問已經包括了劍橋分析醜聞的主要時間節點。電影中的大部分內容由捕捉審覈和反饋到故事隨時間線展開組成。
但是，在展示社交平臺，這個全球用戶用來消磨時間，卻在期間不知不覺地賣了他們的代理權的無情交易基礎時，Netflix確實只是剛開始揭示這個屬於我們時代的故事。