Big-government secrets require a lot of secret keepers. As of October 2012, almost 5m people in the US have security clearances, with 1.4m at the top secret level or higher, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

大政府的秘密需要许多人去保守。美国国家情报总监办公室（Office of the Director of National Intelligence，简称ODNI）的数据显示，截止2012年10月，美国有近500万人拥有“安全通关证”(security clearance)，其中140万人的通关证级别为“绝密”(top secret)级甚至更高。

Most of these people do not have access to as much information as Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor turned leaker, or even Chelsea Manning, the former US army soldier previously known as Bradley who was convicted for giving material to WikiLeaks. But a lot of them do – and that may prove the Achilles heel of government. Keeping secrets is an act of loyalty as much as anything else, and that sort of loyalty is getting harder to find in the younger generations. If the NSA and other intelligence bodies are going to survive in their present form, they are going to have to figure out how to shrink the number of secrets.

这些人中的大部分人不会像泄密的美国国家安全局(NSA)前合同工爱德华·斯诺登(Edward Snowden)那样接触到那么多的机密信息，甚至也没有美国陆军士兵、原名布莱德利·曼宁(Bradley Manning)的切尔西(Chelsea Manning)接触的机密信息多。曼宁被控向维基解密(WikiLeaks)提供机密文件。但还是有许多人可以接触到机密信息，这最终可能成为美国政府的致命弱点。保密除了其他内涵外，还是一种忠诚行为，在当今的年轻一代中，越来越难以找到这种忠诚了。如果美国国家安全局和其他情报机构想要以当前形态生存下去，它们将不得不考虑如何缩减机密信息的数量。

As writers such as Charlie Stross have explained, the old way of keeping intelligence secrets was to make it part of a life-long culture. The intelligence world would recruit people early in their careers, and give them jobs for life. It was a private club, one filled with code words and secret knowledge.

正如查利·斯特罗斯(Charlie Stross)等作家所解释的，过去，保守情报秘密的方法是让它成为终身文化的一部分。情报界会招募刚进入职场的人，给他们一个铁饭碗。那是一个私人俱乐部，一个充斥着代号和机密信息的俱乐部。

You can see this in Mr Snowden’s leaked documents. The NSA has its own lingo – the documents are riddled with codenames – its own conferences, its own awards and recognitions. An intelligence career meant that you had access to a new world, one to which “normal” people on the outside were completely oblivious. Membership of the private club meant that people were loyal to their organisations, which were in turn loyal back to them.

你可以在斯诺登泄露的文件中看到这一点。美国国家安全局有着自己的术语（文件中充斥着代号）、自己的会议、自己的奖励和表彰。从事情报工作曾经意味着你进入了一个新的世界，一个对外面的“正常”人来说神秘的世界。加入这个私人俱乐部曾经意味着人们忠于他们所属的组织，而组织也忠于他们。

Those days are gone. Yes, there are still the codenames and the secret knowledge, but a lot of the loyalty is gone. Many jobs in intelligence are now outsourced, and there is no job-for-life culture in the corporate world any more. Workforces are flexible, jobs are interchangeable and people are expendable.

那些日子已经一去不复返了。没错，这里仍然有代号和机密信息，但很多忠诚已不复存在。如今，许多情报工作被外包出去，这个“职场”已不再有终身就业的文化。员工队伍具有弹性，工作可以调换，人员可被裁掉。

Sure, it is possible to build a career in the classified world of government contracting, but there are no guarantees. Younger people grew up knowing this: there are no employment guarantees anywhere. They see it in their friends. They see it all around them.

当然，在承接政府业务的保密世界里，寻求职业发展也是可能的，但这里没有任何保证。这一代年轻人在长大时就明白：如今任何地方都没有铁饭碗。他们从朋友的经历中明白了这一点，他们从身边每个人的经历中明白了这一点。

They also believe possibly in openness, especially the hacker types the NSA needs to recruit. They believe that information wants to be free, and that security comes from public knowledge and debate. Yes, there are important reasons why some intelligence secrets need to be secret, and the NSA culture reinforces secrecy daily. But this is a crowd that is used to radical openness. They have been writing about themselves on the internet for years. They have said very personal things on Twitter; they have had embarrassing photographs of themselves posted on Facebook. They have been dumped by a lover in public. They have overshared in the most compromising ways – and they have gotten through it. It is a tougher sell convincing this crowd that government secrecy trumps the public’s right to know.

他们可能还信奉开放性，尤其是美国国家安全局需要招募的那种黑客。他们相信信息是想要自由的，而安全来源于公开信息和辩论。没错，保守某些情报机密有着重要理由，美国国家安全局的文化也强调日常保密工作。但这是一个习惯于彻底开放的人群。他们多年来一直在网上发布自己的信息。他们在Twitter上发布非常个人的信息，他们在Facebook上张贴自己的糗照。他们公开被情侣抛弃。他们以最令人难堪的方式过度分享信息，而且他们挺过来了。很难让这些人相信政府机密比公众知情权更重要。

Psychologically, it is hard to be a whistleblower. There is an enormous amount of pressure to be loyal to our peer group: to conform to their beliefs, and not to let them down. Loyalty is a natural human trait; it’s one of the social mechanisms we use to thrive in our complex social world. This is why good people sometimes do bad things at work.

从心理上来说，成为一名泄密者可不是件容易事。我们承受着对自己所在群体保持忠诚的巨大压力：我们必须与他们的信念保持一致，不做对不起他们的事。忠诚是人类的本性；它是让我们在这个复杂的社会性世界中立足的社会机制之一。这就是为什么好人有时在工作中干坏事。

When someone becomes a whistleblower, he or she is deliberately eschewing that loyalty. In essence, they are deciding that allegiance to society at large trumps that to peers at work. That is the difficult part. They know their work buddies by name, but “society at large” is amorphous and anonymous. Believing that your bosses ultimately do not care about you makes that switch easier.

当某人成为一名泄密者的时候，他或她刻意回避了这种忠诚。实质上，他们认为对整体社会忠诚要比对同事忠诚更重要。这是一个困难的环节。他们认识自己的同事，但“整体社会”没有明确的形态而且没有名字。认为你的老板归根结底不关心你，会让这种转变变得更容易。

Whistleblowing is the civil disobedience of the information age. It is a way that someone without power can make a difference. And in the information age – the fact that everything is stored on computers and potentially accessible with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks – whistleblowing on a massive scale is easier than ever.

泄密是信息时代的“公民不服从”(civil disobedience)行为。它可以让无权无势的平头百姓有所作为。而且，在信息时代，大规模泄密比以往任何时候都更方便——所有信息都存储在计算机里，敲几下键盘、点几下鼠标也许就能获取到。

Mr Snowden is 30 years old; Manning 25. They are members of the generation we taught not to expect any long-term anything from their employers. As such, employers should not expect anything long-term from them. It is still hard to be a whistleblower, but for this generation it is a whole lot easier.

斯诺登今年30岁；曼宁25岁。他们这一代人受到的教育是不要对雇主有什么长期的指望。因此，雇主也不应对他们有什么长期的指望。成为泄密者仍是件难事，但对这代人整体而言已经容易多了。

A lot has been written about the problem of over-classification in US government. It has long been thought of anti-democratic and a barrier to government oversight. Now we know that it itself is a security risk. Organizations like the NSA need change their culture of secrecy, and concentrate their security efforts on what truly needs to remain secret. Their default practice of classifying everything is not going to work any more. Hey, NSA: you’ve got a problem.

美国政府保密过度的问题，此前已有大量论述。这种做法一直被视为与民主原则相悖，也不利于政府控管。现在我们知道，它本身也是一个安全隐患。美国国家安全局这类组织需要改变其保密文化，将安全努力集中于真正需要保密的信息。它们那种“将一切都保密”的默认做法已经不管用了。嗨，美国国家安全局：你出问题了。

The writer, a cryptographer and computer security specialist, is the author of ‘Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive’

本文作者是一名密码学专家和计算机安全专家，著有《我们的信任：为什么有时信任，有时不信任》(Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive)一书