彭博“窥探门”的六大未解之谜

    这是彭博终端消息功能的组成部分，而这个功能在华尔街被广泛使用，它是如今常见的一种追踪信息。Facebook和其他社交网络会告诉你还有谁在线上，但它们不像彭博终端那样跟买卖股票和债券以及转移资金密切相连，而Facebook也不得不对其隐私政策进行反思，并多次致歉。

“隐身者”最终会被华尔街所接受吗？

    有一种方法可以退出，彭博终端用户可以选择隐藏自己的状态，这会在他们的个人页面上标注一个灰点。很显然，太平洋投资管理公司（PIMCO）的人喜欢隐藏自己对彭博终端的使用状态。比尔•格罗斯和穆罕穆德•艾尔-埃利安两人电邮地址旁边都是灰点。贝莱德集团（Blackrock）的首席执行官拉里•芬克也是所谓的隐身者，但大多数人不是，这在一定程度上是因为它不符合华尔街的社交礼仪。“我们会开隐身者的玩笑。”一位对冲基金经理表示，“他们认为自己是什么大人物，但谁在乎你是在线还是离线呢？”

    然而，你能够想象出一些使用状态在其中很重要的情景。举例来说，如果知道美联储的交易操作负责人西蒙•波特在他的办公室并正在使用终端，那么债券交易员或许能够探查到一些蛛丝马迹。哎呀，彭博终端上并没有波特状态的任何信息，这要么是因为他没有自己的终端，要么是因为美联储有人觉得最好还是向全世界提供这些信息。但我能看到纽约联储主席威廉•杜德利不在线，达拉斯联储主席理查德•费舍尔虽然在线但目前并不在使用终端，而亚特兰大联储主席丹尼斯•洛克哈特是一位隐身者——他是美联储最富有的高管之一。

    继续嘲笑吧，但既然你知道彭博利用了你的状态信息，而且所有其他记者和彭博终端新手也知道这件事，你们这些华尔街人士可能要考虑同样当一名隐身者了。

彭博记者有机会获取的信息比其余人多多少？

    然而，仅仅因为你隐藏自己的状态信息并不意味着彭博记者无法追踪你的使用情况。在这一点上，彭博的一位发言人拒绝发表评论。多克托洛夫和温克勒试图为此事辩解，但目前尚不清楚彭博记者能够获取多少信息。彭博方面表示，记者的特殊访问权限已在上月被取消。

    彭博确认其记者能够访问用户登录历史记录，除此之外的事情就不清楚了。温克勒说，从那些记录只能看出汇总的用户数据，“类似于看到某人使用微软Word和Excel这些软件的次数。”但是，其他曾在彭博社任职的记者表示，你可以输入一个具体的人，然后看到其正在查看的东西。所以，那听起来并不像什么汇总数据。而且，彭博终端跟Word和Excel有什么相同之处呢？有报道说，彭博记者能够知道谁阅读了他们的报道，那看起来像是非常详细的窥探。

银行会起诉彭博吗？

    彭博记者窥探终端用户的丑闻是在高盛集团发起投诉后曝光的。但现在看来——根据《纽约时报》的报道——几乎每家大银行都已经跟彭博生出嫌隙。突然之间，那些不明原因的消息泄露能够解释得通了。你还记得自己想破脑袋也想不出“熟悉该银行业务的消息人士”是谁吗？嗯，那位消息人士就是你的彭博终端。

    It's part of Bloomberg's messaging function, which is widely used on Wall Street, and it's the kind of tracking info that's common these days. Facebook and other social networks will tell you who else is online. But none of those things is as closely tied to buying and selling stocks and bonds, and moving money, as Bloomberg. And Facebook (FB), too, has had to rethink and apologize for its privacy policies numerous times.

Will "grey dotters" finally become socially acceptable?

    There is a way to opt out. Bloomberg users can choose to keep their status on private, which gives them a grey dot on their Bloomberg bio page. PIMCO-ites, apparently, like to keep their Bloomberg usage to themselves. Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian both have grey dots next to their e-mails. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink is also a so-called grey dotter. But most people don't, in part because it's not socially acceptable on Wall Street. "We make fun of grey dotters," says one hedge fund manager. "They think they are big shots. Who cares if you are in or out?"

    But you could imagine instances when it could matter. Bond traders, for instance, might be able to glean some edge knowing that Simon Potter, who heads up the buying and selling for the Federal Reserve, is in his office and at his terminal. Alas, Bloomberg doesn't have any information on the status of Potter, either because he doesn't have his own machine, or someone there thought better of providing that information to the whole world. But I was able to see that New York Fed chairman William Dudley was out. And Richard Fisher of Dallas was in but not currently using his terminal. Atlanta's Dennis Lockhart, and one of the richest top executives of the Fed, however, is a grey dotter.

    Go ahead and scoff, but now that you know how Bloomberg uses your status information and that every other reporter and now Bloomberg novice knows about it, you Wall Streeters might decide to become grey dotters, too.

How much more info did Bloomberg reporters have access to than the rest of us?

    But just because you put up the grey dot doesn't mean that Bloomberg reporters weren't able to track your usage. A Bloomberg spokesperson declined to comment on this point. Doctoroff and Winkler have tried to explain it away, but it's not clear how much info Bloomberg reporters had access to. They say the special access was cut off last month.

    Bloomberg has confirmed that its reporters had access to a log-on history. Beyond that it's not clear. Winkler said the reports could only see aggregate user data, "akin to being able to see how many times someone used Microsoft Word vs. Excel." But other ex-Bloomberg reporters have said that you could type in a specific person and see the types of things they were looking at. So that doesn't sound like aggregate data. And what exactly is the Bloomberg terminal equivalent of Word and Excel? Some reports have said that Bloomberg reporters were able to tell who read their stories. That seems like detailed snooping.

Will banks sue Bloomberg?

    The revelation that Bloomberg reporters were spying on clients came to light after complaints from Goldman. But now it appears, according to latest reporting from the New York Times, that pretty much every big bank has had some beef with Bloomberg. All of a sudden that unexplained leak makes sense. Remember being stumped by who a "source with knowledge of the bank's activities" was? Well that source was your Bloomberg terminal.