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  3. The night of December 16, 1773, dozens of Massachusetts colonists quietly boarded three ships and dumped what would now be close

The night of December 16, 1773, dozens of Massachusetts colonists quietly boarded three ships and dumped what would now be close

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问题     The night of December 16, 1773, dozens of Massachusetts colonists quietly boarded three ships and dumped what would now be close to $1 million worth of British tea into Boston Harbor.
    The Sons of Liberty painted their faces and dressed like Native Americans. They barely spoke, to avoid revealing their identities. “There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself,” one of them wrote. It worked. Only a single person was caught.
    What if the British had access to modern surveillance technology? What if they’d had access to face recognition?
    From the Boston Tea Party to the printing of Common Sense, the ability to dissent—and to do it anonymously—was central to the founding of the United States. Anonymity was no luxury: It was a crime to advocate separation from the British Crown. It was a crime to dump British tea into Boston harbor. This trend persists. Our history is replete(充满) with moments when it was a “crime” to do the right thing, and legal to inflict injustice.
    The latest crime-fighting tools, however, may eliminate people’s ability to be anonymous. Historically, surveillance technology has tracked our technology: our cars, our computers, our phones. Face recognition technology tracks our bodies. And unlike fingerprinting or DNA analysis, face recognition is designed to identify us from far away and in secret.
    Face recognition is not just about finding terrorists. It’s about finding citizens. As a result of simply having a driver’s license, over half of all American adults are enrolled in a criminal face recognition network. While the details are murky, it appears that Baltimore County police used face recognition to identify people protesting the death of Freddie Gray.
    As law enforcement develops increasingly powerful surveillance tools, we need to ask ourselves: Are we building a world where no dissent is anonymous? A world where the Sons of Liberty are each arraigned(传讯) as British tea still floats in Boston harbor?
    The answer to these questions has to be “no.” In the midst of a heated debate about encryption and the need for privacy and security in our communications, it’s tempting to think that the solutions to these problems will originate in Silicon Valley. They won’t. You can encrypt your hard drive. You can encrypt your emails and texts. You cannot encrypt your face.
    There may be technical means to avoid face recognition. Coincidentally, one of them echoes the face paint worn by the Sons of Liberty. But face recognition’s threat to freedom will not be addressed through a simple change in default settings. It will be addressed only through hard conversations, and legislation, in Congress and state legislatures.
    “Writing and talk do not prove me,” wrote Walt Whitman in his Song of Myself. “I carry the plenum(充分) of proof and everything else in my face.” We have grown accustomed to the monitoring of our technology and communications. There is something different, something intractable and ominous, about the tracking of our bodies.
What’s the author’s main purpose in writing the fourth paragraph?
选项 A、To show the importance of anonymity.
B、To introduce an ongoing trend.
C、To evaluate two historical events.
D、To criticize the injustice in history.
答案A
解析 由题干中的the fourth paragraph定位到原文第四段。主旨大意题。本题考查作者地写第四段的目的。该段开篇通过两个历史事件引出匿名表达意义的重要性，接着阐述原因——主张脱离英国王室曾是犯罪，把英国茶叶倾入波士顿港曾是犯罪，接着指出历史充满了这种不公正的时刻。因此，作者意在表明当做正确的事是犯罪时，匿名表达异议至关重要，故A为答案。B“评价两个历史事件”是对第四段第一句的曲解，该句提到波士顿倾茶事件和《常识》的印刷这两个历史事件，但该句并没有对这两个历史事件进行评价，而是表明在这两个事件中匿名表达异议曾对美国的建国极为重要，故排除；C“介绍一个持续的趋势”并非作者写该段的目的，作者在第四句提到这一趋势持续至今，是为了强调和过去一样，匿名并非过分的要求，故排除；D“批判历史上的不公正”，该段末句提到我们的历史充满了这种时刻：做正确的事是犯罪，做不公正的事却合法，但作者并不是为了批判历史上的不公正，而是为了强调正是因为充满历史充满了这种不公正的时刻，所以匿名表达异议才显得尤为重要，故排除。
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