帕韋爾杜羅夫 俄羅斯的扎克伯格
In the journalistic shorthand of his native Russia, Pavel Durov is unfailingly described as his country’s Mark Zuckerberg. Though flattering, the comparison with the Facebook founder does not seem quite right to me: it overstates Durov’s commercial success while, if anything, understating his personal accomplishments.
在帕韋爾尠坧夫(Pavel Durov)的祖國俄羅斯，新聞報道一直將稱他爲俄羅斯的馬克丠克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)。儘管這是恭維之語，將他與Facebook創始人相比在我看來並不十分恰當：這誇大了杜羅夫的商業成功，卻沒有充分反映出他的個人成就。
Like Zuckerberg, the boyish tech entrepreneur from St Petersburg created his country’s most popular social network, VKontakte, which revolutionised the Russian internet. But in 2011 Durov fell foul of the Kremlin by refusing to close down the pages of opposition activists as protests swelled against the returning president, Vladimir Putin. He became a target of increasing police harassment and was, in effect, forced to sell out of VKontakte to pro-Kremlin investors. Fired as the company’s chief executive in 2014, he quit Russia with $300m in his pocket and founded a new messaging app, Telegram. He now wanders the world preaching the virtues of secure communications and libertarianism.
像扎克伯格一樣，這位來自聖彼得堡、帶着孩子氣的科技企業家創建了俄羅斯最具人氣的社交網絡VKontakte，爲俄羅斯互聯網帶來了革命性變化。但在2011年，抗議普京重任總統的聲浪擴大之時，由於拒絕關閉反對派活動人士的頁面，杜羅夫觸怒了克里姆林宮。警方對他的侵擾日漸增加，他事實上被強迫將VKontakte賣給了親克里姆林宮的投資者。2014年，他被解除了公司首席執行官的職務，帶着3億美元離開了俄羅斯，並打造了一款新的消息應用Telegram。他現在環遊世界，宣揚安全通信和自由主義的價值。
Comparisons aside, Durov has certainly packed a lot into his 30 years and retains grandiose plans for the future. So I am a little surprised when a slim, unassuming man slips into a sleek Italian restaurant in Mayfair and introduces himself in quiet, near-flawless English. His appearance, all-black clothing and rebellious instincts have led to innumerable comparisons with the mysterious action hero Neo in the Matrix films. But Durov’s pale complexion, jet black hair, and doe eyes remind me more of a dreamy prince in a Disney cartoon.
拋開這樣的比較，杜羅夫在他30年的人生裏完成的事情無疑不少，他對未來還有不少宏偉計劃。所以，當一個纖瘦謙遜的人，悄然走入倫敦梅菲爾區(Mayfair)一家典雅的意大利餐廳，輕聲用近乎完美的英語介紹自己時，我有點吃驚。他的外貌、一身黑衣的打扮和叛逆的本性像極了電影《黑客帝國》(Matrix)中神祕的動作英雄尼奧(Neo)。但是他白皙的膚色、烏黑的頭髮以及小鹿般的眼睛，又讓我覺得他更像迪斯尼(Disney)卡通片裏的夢幻王子。
He tells me that he chose Quattro Passi for lunch because he is staying nearby and likes the cooking. “Italian food is simple and healthy, and it’s easier for a vegetarian to choose something from the menu,” he says. It perhaps also reminds him of his childhood: Durov spent several years in Italy, in Turin, because his father Valery (who holds a PhD in philology and is an expert on ancient Rome) was employed there. “I was born in the Soviet Union. Then when I was three or four we moved to Italy and by the time we got back there was no more Soviet Union,” he says.
他告訴我，之所以選擇來Quattro Passi吃午餐，是因爲他就住在這附近，而且他喜歡這裏的菜。“意大利美食簡單又健康，素食者在這裏更容易點菜，”他說。意大利餐廳可能也勾起他的童年回憶：因爲父親瓦列裏（Valery，語言學博士、古羅馬專家）的工作，杜羅夫在意大利都靈待過幾年。“我出生在蘇聯。我三四歲的時候，我家搬到了意大利，等我們回去的時候，蘇聯已經不復存在了，”他說。
The restaurant is a hedge fund manager’s heaven of silver decorations, mirrors and taupe furnishings. We study the menu. Durov orders burrata and plain spaghetti with cheese for the main course. “White?” the waitress enquires. “White and, please, no salt or a minimal amount of salt. Thank you,” he replies. After asking whether they have any rye bread (they have none), he orders some homemade brown bread instead. This makes my order of minestrone and monkfish with cherries seem racy.
這家店配有對衝基金經理最喜愛的銀色內飾、鏡子和灰褐色傢俱。我們看了看菜單。杜羅夫點了布拉塔芝士(burrata)和一份只加芝士的意大利麪作爲主菜。“加白汁？”侍者詢問道。他回答：“請加白汁，不要加鹽或者只加一點點鹽。謝謝。”在詢問他們是否提供黑麥麪包（他們沒有）以後，杜羅夫改爲點了一些黑麪包。這讓我點的意大利濃菜湯和鮟鱇魚配櫻桃顯得有些太豐盛了。
I ask him about his lifestyle as an international nomad. Durov, who says he is addicted to big cities but does not like the concept of countries, explains how he and a core team of four engineers from Telegram take their work with them round the world. “We choose a place and stay there for two or three months, then we relocate to the next place. Adiós.”
我詢問他這種浪跡各國的生活方式怎麼樣。杜羅夫說，大城市讓他着迷，但他不喜歡“國家”這個概念，解釋了爲什麼他和由4名工程師組成的Telegram核心團隊帶着工作環遊世界。“我們選一個地方，在那裏停留兩到三個月，然後說聲再見，再去下一個地方。”
He travels on a passport from St Kitts and, over the past year, he and his team have worked out of San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Berlin, and he is off again soon to Finland. The peripatetic lifestyle also suits his business, given that one of its great selling points is security. “Since the day we started Telegram 18 months ago we haven’t disclosed a single byte of user data to third parties, including government officials.”
他使用聖基茨和尼維斯(St Kitts and Nevis)簽發的護照旅行。過去一年，他和他的團隊在舊金山、紐約、倫敦、巴黎和柏林工作過，他馬上又要去芬蘭了。這種四處流動的生活方式對他的業務也有好處，因爲其最大賣點之一就是安全。“自18個月前我們創立Telegram以來，我們從未向包括政府官員的任何第三方泄露過哪怕一個字節的用戶數據。”
Though Telegram is registered as both a British and a US company, it does not disclose where it rents offices or the legal entities it uses to rent them. This helps shelter his team from any “unnecessary influence”, he says, and enables the company to protect its 62m users from data requests from government. Telegram uses a distributed network of servers in several different jurisdictions, rather than a central hub like most other messaging apps.
儘管Telegram是一家同時在英國和美國註冊的公司，該公司並未披露其租用的辦公地點位於何處，或者用來租用這些辦公地點的法人實體是什麼。這有助於其團隊避開“不必要的影響”，杜羅夫說，這可以使公司保護其6200萬用戶，免於被政府索要數據。不同於使用一箇中央樞紐的大部分消息應用，Telegram的服務器網絡分佈在好幾個不同司法管轄區。
The initial impulse for both of his companies has stemmed, Durov says, from satisfying a personal need: the wish to communicate with his university friends in the case of VKontakte, and the necessity of creating a secure messaging system with Telegram. He had the idea for the latter after he came under intense scrutiny from the Russian authorities in 2011. Armed police attempted to storm his apartment in St Petersburg and he realised that his communications were being tapped. He wanted a means of communicating securely with his 34-year-old brother Nikolai, a mathematician and engineer who helped found VKontakte and later developed the encryption code for the Telegram app.
杜羅夫說，他創建兩家公司的最初動力，是滿足個人需求：想和大學朋友交流的願望使他創建了VKontakte，打造一個安全消息系統的必要性讓他創建了Telegram。他的後一個想法是在2011年俄羅斯政府對他進行嚴密監視後萌生的。當時配有武器的警察試圖闖入他在聖彼得堡的公寓，他意識到自己的通訊被監聽了。他想要一種能與哥哥安全通訊的方式。杜羅夫的哥哥尼古拉(Nikolai) 34歲，是一名數學家和工程師，他幫助杜羅夫創建了VKontakte，後來又爲Telegram應用開發了加密代碼。
“Our right for private communication and privacy is more important than the marginal threats that some politicians would like to make us afraid of. If you get rid of emotion for a minute and think about the threat of terrorism statistically, it’s not even there. The probability that you will slip on a wet floor in your bathroom and die is a thousand times higher than the probability of you dying as a result of terrorism.”
“我們進行私人通訊和保有隱私的權利比一些政治人士想讓我們爲之感到恐懼的微不足道的威脅重要得多。如果你能拋開情感一分鐘，從統計上想一想恐怖主義的威脅，就會發現其根本不存在。你在浴室的溼地板上滑倒而死的可能性要比死於恐怖主義的可能性高一千倍。”
But those statistics can be used to support different conclusions, I counter. Maybe they show that the security services are gleaning vital information from data intercepts and are preventing many more terrorist attacks. Doesn’t end-to-end encryption, such as he uses, only tilt the field in the terrorist’s favour?
我提出反對，這些統計數據也可以被用以支持不同的結論。它們或許表明，安全部門通過數據截取蒐集到了關鍵信息，大大防止了更多恐怖襲擊發生。端對端加密技術，正如杜羅夫所使用的，難道不是僅僅爲恐怖分子製造了有利條件嗎？
He argues it is simplistic to assume the relatively rare occurrence of terrorist incidents in the west is necessarily a sign of government’s effectiveness. Given the ease of committing terrorist acts, maybe it reflects the lack of terrorist intent. “I think we in western civilisation tend to overestimate our own abilities to solve the problems and challenges that we face,” he says.
他表示，認爲西方恐怖事件相對很少發生必然顯示出政府打擊得力，這種看法過於簡單化了。考慮到實施恐怖主義行動的容易程度，或許這反映了恐怖主義意圖並沒有那麼多。“我認爲，西方文明中的我們傾向於高估我們解決所面對問題和挑戰的能力，”杜羅夫表示。
For example, he continues, the pharmaceuticals industry persuades us we need to take pills to keep healthy. “But I don’t use anything pharmaceutical companies have to offer and I’m still healthy. Maybe we shouldn’t be too dependent on the advertisements companies want us to believe. Maybe we shouldn’t be too dependent on politicians trying to make us believe that we are safe only because of their actions.”
他繼續說，比如，製藥行業說服我們相信，我們需要吃藥才能保持健康。“但我從不服用製藥公司生產的任何東西，我依然很健康。或許我們不應該太依賴公司想要我們相信的廣告，也不應該太依賴政治人士——他們想要我們相信，我們之所以安全，完全是因爲他們採取了行動。”
Moreover, if the security services really want to access a user’s data, he says, they can try going to Google and Apple. “Since there is always the probability that these companies can allow the security agencies direct access to your device, nobody can be 100 per cent sure, but one thing Telegram does is make mass surveillance impossible.”
此外，杜羅夫表示，如果安全部門真的想獲取一位用戶的數據，它們可以試着去找谷歌(Google)和蘋果(Apple)。“因爲這些公司允許安全機構直接訪問你的設備的可能性始終存在，沒人能夠百分之百確定，但Telegram所做的其中一件事就是斷絕大規模監視的可能。”
