WASHINGTON — In an investigation involving guns and drugs, the Justice Department obtained a court order this summer demanding that Apple turn over, in real time, text messages between suspects using iPhones.

华盛顿——今年夏天，在一起涉及枪支和毒品的调查中，美国司法部获得了法院命令，要求苹果(Apple)实时提交使用iPhone的嫌疑人之间的短信。

Apple’s response: Its iMessage system was encrypted and the company could not comply.

苹果的回应是：iMessage系统是加密的，所以公司无法提交。

Government officials had warned for months that this type of standoff was inevitable as technology companies like Apple and Google embraced tougher encryption. The case, coming after several others in which similar requests were rebuffed, prompted some senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials to advocate taking Apple to court, several current and former law enforcement officials said.

在此之前的多个月里，政府官员就不断发出警告：随着苹果、谷歌(Google)等科技公司开始采用更加严格的加密方案，这种僵局是不可避免的。一些现任和前任执法人员表示，在此案发生之前，还有其他几次类似的要求也遭到拒绝，导致司法部和联邦调查局(FBI)的一些高级官员主张把苹果公司告上法庭。

While that prospect has been shelved for now, the Justice Department is engaged in a court dispute with another tech company, Microsoft. The case, which goes before a federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday and is being closely watched by industry officials and civil liberties advocates, began when the company refused to comply with a warrant in December 2013 for emails from a drug trafficking suspect. Microsoft said federal officials would have to get an order from an Irish court, because the emails were stored on servers in Dublin.

虽然此事被暂时搁置到一边，司法部却正在与另一家科技公司微软(Microsoft)对簿公堂。位于纽约的一家联邦上诉法院本周三将审理该案，行业人士和公民自由权益提倡者正在密切关注。该案的起因是2013年12月，法院开出一份搜查令，要求微软提供一名贩毒嫌疑人的电子邮件，但微软拒绝服从，表示联邦官员必须获得爱尔兰法院的命令，因为那些邮件储存在都柏林的服务器里。

The conflicts with Apple and Microsoft reflect heightened corporate resistance, in the post-Edward J. Snowden era, by American technology companies intent on demonstrating that they are trying to protect customer information.

政府与苹果和微软之间的这些冲突，反应了企业在“后爱德华·J·斯诺登(Edward J. Snowden)时代”施加的阻力有所加大，因为美国科技公司想要表明，自己在努力保护用户的信息。

“It’s become all wrapped up in Snowden and privacy issues,” said George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer who represents technology companies and as a Justice Department official two decades ago faced the challenge of how to wiretap phone networks that were becoming more digital.

“这些事都演变为围绕着斯诺登和隐私问题，”代表科技公司的律师乔治·J·特威利格三世(George J. Terwilliger III)说。他二十年前在司法部任职，当时电话网络正变得日益数字化，因此他曾面临如何窃听的挑战。

President Obama has charged White House Homeland Security and cybersecurity officials, along with those at the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the intelligence agencies, with proposing solutions — some legislative, some not — to the technology access issue. They are still hashing out their differences, according to law enforcement and administration officials.

奥巴马总统让白宫的国土安全和网络安全官员，连同司法部、联邦调查局及各情报机构的官员一起，提出一些方案——部分涉及立法，部分不涉及——来解决从科技公司获得信息的问题。根据执法官员和奥巴马政府内部人士的说法，目前他们还在努力消除彼此间的分歧。

Some Justice and F.B.I. officials have been frustrated that the White House has not moved more quickly or been more outspoken in the public relations fight that the tech companies appear to be winning, the law enforcement officials said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private conversations.

多名执法官员表示，司法部和联邦调查局的一些官员感到不快，他们觉得白宫行动太慢，在公关大战中不够慷慨陈词，似乎被科技公司占据了上风。由于没有获得私下讨论的许可，这些官员不愿具名。

The White House, after months of study, has yet to articulate a public response to the argument that a victory in the Microsoft case would provide authoritarian governments, particularly the Chinese and Russians, with a way to get access into computer servers located in the United States.

有人提出，如果微软这次败诉，那么极权政府——尤其是中国和俄罗斯——就可能会获得一条途径，从位于美国的计算机服务器上取得信息。白宫已经研究了数月之久，但尚未公开阐明对这种观点的回应。

“Clearly, if the U.S. government wins, the door is open for other governments to reach into data centers in the U.S.,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in a recent interview. Companies and civil liberties groups have been sending in briefs of their own, largely opposing the government’s surveillance powers.

“很显然，如果美国政府获胜，大门就会敞开，其他国家的政府就可以从美国的数据中心获取数据了，”微软的总法律顾问布拉德·史密斯(Brad Smith)在近期的一次采访中说。公司和公民自由组织在散发自己的宣传资料，主要是表示反对政府掌握监视的权力。

At issue are two types of encoding. The first is end-to-end encryption, which Apple uses in its iMessage system and FaceTime, the video conversation system. Companies like Open Whisper Systems, the maker of Signal, and WhatsApp have adopted such encryption for stand-alone apps, which are of particular concern to counterterrorism investigators.

问题关乎两种类型的编码。一种是端到端加密，苹果公司在iMessage和视频聊天服务FaceTime中就使用了这种方式。Signal所属的Open Whisper Systems公司和WhatsApp在单独的应用上也采用了这种加密方式，而此类应用是反恐调查人员尤其关注的一个问题。

With Apple, the encryption and decryption is done by the phones at either end of the conversation; Apple does not keep copies of the message unless one of the users loads it into iCloud, where it is not encrypted. (In the drug and gun investigation this summer, Apple eventually turned over some stored iCloud messages. While they were not the real-time texts the government most wanted, officials said they saw it as a sign of cooperation.)

在苹果公司，加密和解密都是由其中一方的通话手机来进行的。苹果没有相关讯息的备份，除非一方用户将其上传到不加密的iCloud上。（在今夏那起毒品和枪支调查中，苹果最后还是移交了存储在iCloud上的部分讯息。尽管它们不是政府最想要的实时短信，但官员表示，他们认为这是合作的标志。）

The second type of encoding involves sophisticated encryption software on Apple and Android phones, which makes it all but impossible for anyone except the user of the phone to open stored content — pictures, contacts, saved text messages and more — without an access code. The F.B.I. and local authorities oppose the technology, saying it put them at risk of “going dark” on communications between terrorists and about criminal activity on city streets. The American military is more divided on the issue, depending on the mission.

第二种编码涉及苹果和Android手机上的复杂的加密软件。有了它们，除手机用户外，任何人在没有访问码的情况下几乎都不可能打开存储内容，如照片、联系人、保存下来的短信等。FBI和地方当局反对这项技术，称它让自身面临对通讯信息一无所知的风险，而相关通讯会涉及恐怖分子，以及街头犯罪活动。美国军方在这个问题上则存在一定的分歧，具体情况视任务而定。

Officials say a court fight with Apple is still an option, though they acknowledge it would be a long shot. Some object that a legal battle would make it harder for the companies to compromise, the law enforcement officials said. They added that Apple and other companies have privately expressed willingness to find common ground.

官员称，与苹果对薄公堂依然是选择之一，但他们承认，成功的可能性很小。执法官员称，一些人持反对意见，认为打官司会导致科技企业更难妥协。他们还表示，苹果等公司私下里表示愿意寻找共同点。

Apple declined to comment on the case for this article. But company officials have argued publicly that the access the government wants could be exploited by hackers and endanger privacy.

苹果拒绝为本文评论该案。但公司领导层曾公开表示，政府希望获得的访问权限可能会被黑客利用，危及隐私。

“There’s another attack on our civil liberties that we see heating up every day — it’s the battle over encryption,” Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, told a conference on electronic privacy this year. “We think this is incredibly dangerous.”

“我们看到，又一场针对公民自由的攻击每天都在升温，它就是围绕加密展开的斗争，”苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克(Tim Cook)在今年的一次有关电子隐私的会议上说。“我们认为这种情况极其危险。”

Echoing the arguments of industry experts, he added, “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too.” If criminals or countries “know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it,” he concluded.

接下来，他重复了行业专家的观点，“如果为了给警察行方便而把钥匙放在门垫下，那么窃贼也能找到。”如果罪犯或某些国家“知道有一把钥匙藏在某个地方，那么他们不找到钥匙是不会罢休的，”他总结道。

The Microsoft case centers on whether the fact that data is stored around the world relieves American firms of turning it over. The government, which won in Federal District Court, has argued in its brief to the appeals court that where the data is stored is irrelevant because the company still has control of email records. The White House declined to comment because the case is in litigation.

微软一案的核心是，数据存放在世界各地这个事实，是否能免除美国公司移交数据的责任。在联邦地区法院胜诉的政府在给上诉法院的案情摘要中称，数据存放在哪里无关紧要，因为微软依然控制着电子邮件记录。因为案件正在诉讼过程中，白宫拒绝置评。

“People want to know what law will be applied to their data,” Mr. Smith of Microsoft said. “French want their rights under French law, and Brazilians under Brazilian law. What is the U.S. government going to do when other governments reach into the U.S. data centers, without notifying the U.S. government?”

“大家想知道他们的数据会适用什么法律，”微软的史密斯说。“法国人希望用法国的法律保护自己的权利，巴西人希望用巴西的法律。假如其他国家的政府无需通知美国政府就能进入美国的数据中心，美国政府会怎么做？”

Chinese firms already have plans to build facilities on American soil that would store electronic communications, so the question may be more than hypothetical. In its brief, Microsoft argues that Congress will ultimately have to weigh in on the issue, since it is as much a political matter as a legal one: “Only Congress has the institutional competence and constitutional authority to balance law enforcement needs against our nation’s sovereignty, the privacy of its citizens and the competitiveness of its industry.”

中国公司已经打算在美国境内修建设施，用以存放电子通讯信息，所以这个问题并非凭空想象。在案情摘要中，微软认为国会最终将不得不介入此事，因为这既是一个政治问题，也是一个法律问题：“只有国会拥有相应的制度能力和宪法权力来平衡执法需求与国家主权、公民隐私和业界竞争力之间的关系。”