Increasingly, however, it feels as though those limits are being constantly breached, either voluntarily, accidentally, by force or by cunning. With blogs, tweets, webcams, Facebook and YouTube, there is always a mic or camera somewhere and it is always running. Our personal diaries have become an open book. The era in which we might reasonably expect to enjoy a conversation that is both discrete (separate, apart and autonomous) and discreet (cautious, unobtrusive and delicate) has passed. For the moment at least, we are all living our lives in public.
breach n. &v. 违反;破坏
The personal fallout from all of this is clear and go beyond mere embarrassment. Take Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers student who committed suicide after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, set up a camera in his room to watch Tyler in a gay sexual encounter. Later, Ravi would try the same again and tweet about it to his 150 followers. In the past, such homophobia would have gone no further than malicious gossip – vicious, hurtful and wrong, certainly. But in all likelihood, it would not have been as devastating to Clementi's self-respect – and possibly with less fatal consequences. Throughout the western world, teenagers – particularly, young women – are routinely humiliated by having their indiscretions recorded and sent out to the world.
go beyond 超出;胜过
devastating adj. 毁灭性的;破坏性的
fatal adj. 致命的;毁灭性的
But there are political ramifications, too, even if the consequences of these are less clear-cut. On the one hand, it forces elites out into the open where their deliberations and pronouncements might be judged against their actions. There are clearly benefits to this. The truly awful thing about the incident between then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy shortly before the last election was not just that he referred to her as "that bigoted woman" when he was in his car and didn't know the microphone was on. It was that only minutes before, he had told her she was "a very good woman [who had] served the community" when he did know they were on. That gave credence to the popular perception that the political class held voters in contempt. The problem wasn't that he got caught, it was that he did it in the first place.
hold in contempt 对……不屑一顾;轻视
Left there, however, and what we have is not more openness, but more gaffes. Obama and Sarkozy deriding Binyamin Netanyahu, and Obama blabbing his post-election strategy for Russia, or Tony Blair's cringeworthy "Yo, Blair" encounter with George Bush at the G8. Entertaining and illustrative, certainly, but rarely more than that.
But on-mic embarrassment is not the whole story: the revelation of serious information that our rulers would rather we did not have can be compelling. WikiLeaks provides a good example. By redistributing information from the US government to the world, it gave the public an unprecedented insight into US diplomacy. Interestingly, most of what it revealed we might have guessed. But once it was out there, it was difficult for officialdom to deny it and one could argue that these were not their secrets to keep.
redistribute vt. 重新分配;再分配
So far, so good. But there is a price we pay for this exposure that more than rivals the regretful blushes of a bare-breasted waitress at Halloween. The net effect will also be that, in future, US diplomats will be less forthright in offering honest opinions to their bosses for fear those opinions might one day be leaked and create an incident. So, by leaking confidential diplomatic correspondence, there is a chance of exposing hypocrisy – but that chance comes with the certainty of inhibiting open, private discussion. This endangers the kind of back-door discussions that made everything from the Northern Ireland peace process to the release of Nelson Mandela possible in a way they would not have been had everything been on display.
So far, so good 目前为止，一切很好;到目前为止还好
leak v. 泄露
Moreover, for all the talk of openness, what we post we do not necessarily own. We are often handing over information about ourselves and our friends to corporate entities and advertisers, which can end up in the hands of a state that is interested in anything but openness. In Britain, the government is about to introduce legislation that would give the police and intelligence officers the right to trawl our Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Skype interactions.
hand over 交出;送交