日本办公室监控技术逐渐走向极端

Having ceded the battle of the gadgets to Korea and the U.S., Japan's electronics titans need to reinvent themselves -- this time as our great protectors, apparently.
日本电子巨头在手持设备之战输给韩国和美国之后，急需重塑自我。这一次，他们看来打算扮演守护神角色。

Harnessing moral panics, such as fear of crime or terrorism, Japan's largest tech companies are growing and investing heavily in systems for executive command and control, surveillance, and border checks. The results are the most sophisticated spy and monitoring tools ever conceived.
日本最大的高科技公司正在利用国民对犯罪或恐怖主义的恐慌心理，投入巨资打造行政命令和控制、监视和边境检查系统。它的成果就是一系列极其复杂、令人难以想象的间谍和监视工具。

"Japanese companies are the leaders in creating innovative surveillance technology and implementation, " according to a report from the University of Queens in Canada, published in Company/Governmental Surveillance in Japan, a journal of surveillance studies. Japan's NEC, a leader in the field, now dedicates 10% of its R&D spending to developing these systems.
“日本公司在开发创新性监控技术和实施方面已处在全球领先的地位，”加拿大皇后大学(University of Queens)在日本监控研究期刊《公司与政府监控》(Company/Governmental Surveillance)发布的一份研究报告这样写道。作为该领域的领导者，日本的NEC公司投入了10%的研发支出来开发这些系统。

"Traditionally, Japanese governments have been keen to protect and cultivate domestic electronic companies so that they become the driving force for Japanese economic development, " explains surveillance researcher Kiyoshi Abe at Kwansei University in Japan. "So it's easy for them to develop and introduce more invasive surveillance technology, utilizing public worry and fear around rising political-military tensions between Japan and China."
“传统上，日本政府一直热衷于保护和培育国内电子企业，希望它们成为日本经济发展的推动力，”日本关西大学( Kwansei University)监控研究员小岛清解释说。“所以，对于它们来说，在日本和中国的政治和军事紧张局势持续加深，公众深感担忧和恐惧之际，开发、推出更具侵入性的监控技术是件非常容易的事情。”

Nor is this exclusively Japan Inc.'s agenda. Corporations worldwide are cashing in on deployment of electronic spying and monitoring. The global security software market grew 7.9% in 2012, according to research from Gartner, driven by "new threats and working practices."
不过，这也并不是日本公司的专属领地。电子侦察和监视设备的部署正在为世界各地的相关公司带来滚滚财源。根据高德纳咨询公司(Gartner)的研究，2012年，在“新威胁和新工作方式”的驱动下，全球安全软件市场增长了7.9%。

Japanese companies, however, appear to be among the vanguard in this space. At a recent NEC tech exhibition in Tokyo, absent were the computer monitors and laptops that once characterized the firm. In their place were booths dedicated to data surveillance and face recognition systems marketed as "technologies to safeguard lives and property."
然而，日本企业似乎正处于这个市场空间的先锋行列。最近在东京举行的一次NEC技术展上，我们看不到这家公司昔日的代表性产品，比如电脑显示器和笔记本电脑。取而代之的，是一些专门陈列数据监视和人脸识别系统的展台。NEC的营销口号声称，这些都是用来“保障生命和财产安全的技术。”

The eye-catching "safety solutions" include programs aimed at snooping on workers -- known as "performance monitoring" in the industry -- and an application dubbed the Mental Health Check Tool. As we grow accustomed to business and the state harnessing the tools of the Information Age to scrutinize everything we do and say -- privacy is no longer a social norm, claims Facebook's (FB) Mark Zuckerberg. Japanese technology, it seems, is going one step further: enabling corporations to monitor our feelings.
这些引人注目的“安全解决方案”包括旨在窥探员工的方案（业内的行话叫“性能监控”），和一个被称为心理健康检查工具(Mental Health Check Tool)的应用程序。随着我们越来越习惯企业和国家利用“信息时代”的工具来审查我们的一言一行，用Facebook公司掌门人马克•扎克伯格的话说就是，隐私不再是一种社会规范。而日本的技术似乎正在向前迈出一大步：让企业监控我们的情绪。