Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private
Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private
英国人希望他们的私人信息保持私密
Brits have delivered a fairly unambiguous verdict on giving the government access to their encrypted messages: no, thanks. New polling commissioned by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) found that 93 percent of British adults believe they have a right to private conversations online, while 89 percent think nobody should be able to access their personal messages without a court order.
英国人对于是否应允许政府访问其加密信息给出了相当明确的结论：不，谢谢。民主与技术中心（CDT）委托进行的一项民意调查发现，93%的英国成年人认为他们有权在网上进行私人对话，而89%的人认为在没有法院命令的情况下，任何人都不应有权访问他们的个人信息。
Perhaps more awkwardly for Westminster, two-thirds said they would not trust either the current government or any future one with the power to access encrypted messages.
对于威斯敏斯特（英国政府）来说，更尴尬的是，三分之二的受访者表示，他们不信任现任政府或任何未来政府拥有访问加密信息的权力。
That distrust crosses political lines. Among people who voted in the 2024 general election, 58 percent of Labour voters said they wouldn’t trust any government with the power, alongside 59 percent of Conservatives, 56 percent of Liberal Democrats, 69 percent of Greens and 75 percent of Reform voters.
这种不信任跨越了政治界限。在2024年大选中投票的选民中，58%的工党选民表示不信任任何政府拥有这种权力，保守党选民中这一比例为59%，自由民主党为56%，绿党为69%，改革党选民则高达75%。
Public First did the asking, polling 2,000 British adults for CDT in April and weighting the results to reflect the wider population. The margin of error is 2.2 percentage points.
Public First公司受CDT委托，于4月份对2000名英国成年人进行了民意调查，并对结果进行了加权处理以反映更广泛的人口结构。误差幅度为2.2个百分点。
The findings land as the UK government’s appetite for slurping encrypted data continues to collide with the tech industry’s insistence that encryption works best when nobody has a spare key lying around.
这些调查结果出炉之际，英国政府对获取加密数据的渴望，正持续与科技行业的立场发生碰撞——后者坚持认为，只有当没有任何人持有“备用钥匙”时，加密技术才能发挥最佳效果。
That fight became particularly public when Apple withdrew Advanced Data Protection from UK users after receiving a secret Technical Capability Notice (TCN) under the Investigatory Powers Act. Apple challenged the order, and while the US government later said Britain had withdrawn its demand for access to Americans’ encrypted data, reports have since suggested another TCN was issued focusing on British users.
当苹果公司在收到根据《调查权力法》发出的秘密“技术能力通知”（TCN）后，撤销了英国用户的“高级数据保护”功能时，这场争端变得尤为公开。苹果公司对该命令提出了质疑，尽管美国政府后来表示英国已撤回了访问美国人加密数据的要求，但此后有报道称，英国又针对英国用户发布了另一份TCN。
Despite the international row, 55 percent of those polled hadn’t heard about the Apple notice at all. Once presented with the idea, enthusiasm remained thin.
尽管发生了这场国际争端，但55%的受访者根本没有听说过苹果公司的这份通知。而在了解这一情况后，公众的支持热情依然寥寥。
Just 12 percent backed the government being able to secretly order companies to provide access to users’ information while preventing those companies from revealing the order. A third said the government shouldn’t have that power at all, while another 41 percent wanted greater transparency or parliamentary oversight.
仅有12%的人支持政府秘密命令公司提供用户访问权限，同时禁止这些公司披露该命令。三分之一的人表示政府根本不应拥有这种权力，另有41%的人要求提高透明度或加强议会监督。
Nor were respondents particularly sold on sacrificing security for law enforcement. 53 percent said the security risks of accessing encrypted messages outweighed the benefits, compared with 28 percent who thought the benefits came out on top.
受访者也不太愿意为了执法而牺牲安全性。53%的人认为访问加密信息带来的安全风险大于收益，而认为收益大于风险的比例仅为28%。
The reasons will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the encryption debate for more than five minutes. 84 percent worried that mechanisms allowing access to encrypted messages could introduce vulnerabilities for hackers and criminals, while 82 percent were concerned the powers could be abused.
对于任何关注加密辩论超过五分钟的人来说，这些理由听起来都很熟悉。84%的人担心允许访问加密信息的机制可能会为黑客和犯罪分子引入漏洞，而82%的人担心这些权力会被滥用。
Knowing someone might be watching could also change how people behave. 65 percent said they’d become more cautious about what they liked, shared or commented on, while 41 percent said they’d self-censor criticism of public institutions or government officials.
知道有人可能在监视也会改变人们的行为方式。65%的人表示，他们会对自己的点赞、分享或评论变得更加谨慎，而41%的人表示，他们会自我审查对公共机构或政府官员的批评。
CDT is not a disinterested observer: the digital rights group campaigns for strong encryption and commissioned the research as part of that work. The polling itself, however, was carried out independently.
CDT并非中立的观察者：该数字权利组织一直致力于倡导强加密技术，并委托进行了这项研究作为其工作的一部分。不过，民意调查本身是由独立机构执行的。
Commenting on the research, Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group, said: “The British public instinctively know that being able to communicate privately is crucial to our individuality and to the survival of a free and open society. The government persists with the myth that it can weaken encryption to target the bad guys only. Attacks on the security of our phones, security tools and messaging apps harm us all and make our democracy weaker.”
开放权利组织（Open Rights Group）执行董事吉姆·基洛克（Jim Killock）在评论这项研究时表示：“英国公众本能地知道，能够私下交流对于我们的个性以及自由开放社会的生存至关重要。政府坚持一种神话，即它可以削弱加密技术以仅针对坏人。对我们手机、安全工具和消息应用程序安全性的攻击会伤害我们所有人，并削弱我们的民主。”
None of this is likely to end Westminster’s long-running pursuit of encrypted communications. But if ministers were hoping the public was enthusiastically behind them, the numbers suggest otherwise.
这一切都不太可能终结威斯敏斯特对加密通信的长期追逐。但如果部长们曾希望公众能热情地支持他们，那么这些数据表明事实并非如此。