America’s largest technology companies have joined Apple’s fight against the government over data protection and security, in an unusual display of unity¹ by the Silicon² Valley rivals.

美国大型科技公司纷纷加入苹果(Apple)的战队，支持后者就数据保护和安全与美国政府进行斗争。这些相互竞争的硅谷公司在此事上表现出了异乎寻常的团结。

More than a dozen motions filed on Thursday sided with Apple as it tries to resist a demand to write software that would help the FBI unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. Civil liberties groups and IT trade associations lined up alongside dozens of law professors and cryptography experts, after Apple filed its own motion for the judicial³ order to be withdrawn⁴ last week.

周四，这些公司提交了十几份动议，支持苹果努力抵制一项要其编写软件帮美国联邦调查局(FBI)解锁圣贝纳迪诺枪击案凶手iPhone的要求。上周苹果提交要求撤销这一法庭令的动议后，公民自由组织、信息科技行业协会以及数十名法学教授和密码学专家联合起来站在苹果一边。

“If the government prevails, then this case will be the first of many requiring companies to degrade the security and to undermine the trust in their products so essential to privacy in the digital age,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in its brief.

美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)在其案情摘要中写道：“如果政府获胜，那么此案将催生许多要求企业降低安全和自毁人们对其产品信任的案子，而在这个数字化时代，安全和信任对于隐私有着至关重要的意义。”

James Comey, FBI chief, warned at a congressional hearing this week of the dangers of creating “warrant-proof spaces”, saying: “The tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less and less effective.”

FBI局长詹姆斯•科米(James Comey)本周在美国国会听证会上针对造就“抗令状空间”的危险发出警告，他表示：“我们用来保护人们安全的手段正逐渐失去效力。”

In one heavyweight grouping led by Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon, 15 tech companies collectively worth more than $2tn said the government’s order against Apple “exceeds the bounds of existing law and, when applied⁵ more broadly, will harm Americans’ security in the long run”.

以谷歌(Google)、微软(Microsoft)、Facebook和亚马逊(Amazon)为首、合计市值超过2万亿美元的15家重量级科技公司表示，美国政府对苹果的命令“逾越了现行法律的界限，若被更加广泛地采用，终将损害美国人的安全。”

The companies, who also include Cisco, Dropbox, Snapchat and Yahoo and are together used by billions of people around the world, noted⁶ that they “often compete vigorously with Apple — and with each other” but “here speak in one voice because of the singular importance of this case to them and their customers”. Users were demanding increased protection from hackers⁷ as they store more and more personal information on devices such as smartphones, they said.

这些公司还包括思科(Cisco)、Dropbox、Snapchat和雅虎(Yahoo!)，它们在全世界合计拥有数十亿用户。这些公司指出，它们“与苹果、以及彼此之间经常展开激烈竞争”，但“现在以一个声音发声，是因为此案对它们以及它们的用户有着独特的重要性”。它们表示，随着用户往智能手机等设备里存储的个人信息越来越多，他们也在要求加强保护措施、防止黑客侵入。

While being careful to note that they were not “shielding those who break the law”, the group said it wanted to resist the government’s attempt to “commandeer a company’s own engineers to undermine their products’ data security features”. If their engineers were forced to rewrite their software in this way, “those new versions would not be the same product any more. Box would not be Box; Gmail would not be Gmail; WhatsApp would not be WhatsApp; and so on”.

这些企业谨慎地指出，它们并不是在“保护犯法者”，而是想抵制政府“强征一家企业的工程师去破坏他们产品数据安全特性”的企图。如果以这种方式迫使它们的工程师重写它们的软件，“那些新的版本将不再是原来的产品。Box将不再是Box，Gmail将不再是Gmail，WhatsApp将不再是WhatsApp，别的也是如此。”

A second group of tech companies including Airbnb, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and eBay made a separate filing accusing the government of “circumventing⁸ the procedures adopted by Congress” to “enlist⁹ the judiciary in re-writing laws without engaging in an essential public debate”.

包括Airbnb、Twitter、领英(LinkedIn)、Reddit和eBay在内的另一群科技公司也提交了动议，谴责政府“绕开国会通过的流程，在不展开必要的公开辩论的情况下就拉司法部门重写法律。”