彭博“窥探门”的六大未解之谜

    银行会不会起诉彭博尚不清楚，但如果起诉，银行方面将有充分的证据。《财富》也有一台彭博终端，而我们跟彭博签署的合同——它似乎适用于一般公司客户——看起来在两个地方给予其记者窥探我们的权利。这份合同在一个地方规定：“承租方（《财富》）认可并理解出租方（彭博）可能监控承租方对服务的一般使用情况，但仅限于设备运行方面的原因。”有人可能将这句话解读为，彭博只能将那些信息用于确保终端正常工作。但彭博则可能认为，合同条款包含了提高其用户“操作”体验的任何事情。如果一篇关于你的尴尬报道提高了其他用户的使用体验，那彭博似乎脱不了干系。

    《财富》跟彭博的合同是在2003年签订的。据报道，一些银行表示，其签订的合同似乎有保护用户机密性的条款。但我们的合同里没有。因此，要么是彭博更新了合同条款，要么是你们的律师比我们更优秀。

用户会放弃彭博终端吗？

    一般看法认为，彭博的31.5万名用户不会因为这次窥探丑闻而流失太多。不过，这种看法似乎假定华尔街的每个人做的是同一种工作。

    举例来说，交易员无法离开彭博终端及其即时查看新闻、股市和债券市场价格的功能。但对企业并购银行家来说，在办公桌上摆一台彭博终端更多的是一种地位象征，而不是你真正需要的东西。银行家们或许会从彭博终端上获取信息，但他们进行交易所做的分析大多是在Excel电子表格上进行。另外，这些企业并购银行家对于被追踪的态度可能是最为偏执的。特定行业的知名银行家可能不会希望其他人知道自己在周日或者尤其是长周末后的周一身在办公室（周末放假时还在办公室是进行交易的信号）。而且不要忘了，这件事发生在华尔街寻求削减开支的时候。一台彭博终端的使用年费大概是2万美元，因此，虽然没有大银行打算因为这件事或其他任何记者违规访问数据的行为而完全放弃使用彭博终端，但那并不意味着没有人会放弃。

彭博记者窥探过其他记者吗？

    这就到了整件事中最重要的一个问题：彭博记者窥探过我或者其他记者吗？或许吧，那是有可能的。《纽约时报》拥有7台彭博终端，但一位发言人表示，其中没有一台是登记在个别记者的名下，它们是由新闻编辑部成员共享的。彭博终端在道琼斯公司（Dow Jones）更加稀缺，《华尔街日报》（The Wall Street Journal）记者无法使用那些机器。但《巴伦周刊》（Barron）有一台，《金融时报》（The Financial Times）则有一堆，但该报发言人没有回应到底有多少台。

    几年前，《财富》图书管理员一时较起劲，她向彭博一位客服人员询问记者们是否能够看到她所查询的问题。对方的回答含糊其辞，令她一直困惑不解。不过，《财富》内部没有人记得自己在彭博终端上查询时导致该社窥探我们的事情。在报道摩根大通（JPMorgan）“伦敦鲸”事件方面，彭博确实击败了《华尔街日报》，尽管大多数人似乎将独家报道的功劳记到了后者头上。但由于《华尔街日报》没有彭博终端，我们很难将这件事跟目前的窥探丑闻联系在一起。

    更重要的是，彭博拥有一项政策，即限制其所认定的媒体直接竞争对手使用彭博终端。所以，如果真有使用彭博终端窥探其他记者的策略，这可是自相矛盾。（财富中文网）

    译者：王灿均

    It's not clear they can sue, but if they do they will have a good case. Fortune has a Bloomberg terminal. And it looks like the contract we signed with Bloomberg, which appears to be the generic one used by the company, gives its employees the right to spy on us in two places. In one place, the contract states, "Lessee [Fortune] acknowledges and understand that Lessor [Bloomberg] may monitor, solely for operational reasons, Lessee's general use of the Service." One could interpret that to mean Bloomberg could only use the information to make sure the unit was operating properly. But Bloomberg could argue that the statement referred to anything that improved its users' "operational" experience. And if a particularly embarrassing story about you improved other users' experience that day, then Bloomberg seems to be covered.

    Fortune's contract was signed back in 2003. Reportedly some banks said that their contracts seem to protect the users' confidentiality. But that's not in our contract. So either Bloomberg has updated its contract, or your lawyers are better than our lawyers.

Will clients flee Bloomberg?

    So the general wisdom is that Bloomberg won't lose many of its 315,000 customers from this spying scandal. But that seems to assume that everyone on Wall Street does the same job.

    Traders for example probably couldn't live without a Bloomberg, and its immediate access to news and stock and bond market prices. But for mergers and acquisitions bankers, having a Bloomberg on your desk is more a status thing than something you really need. Bankers may get info from Bloomberg, but most of the analytics they run on deals happen on Excel spreadsheets. M&A guys are also probably the most paranoid about being tracked. A prominent banker in a particular industry might not want others to know he is in the office on Sunday or especially a Monday of a long weekend. (Being in the office on a holiday weekend is a telltale sign of a deal.) And remember this comes at a time when Wall Street is already looking to cut costs. Bloomberg terminals cost about $20,000 each. So while no big bank is going to completely ditch Bloomberg over this or any other breach of data to reporters, that doesn't mean no Bloomberg terminals are going to go dark.

Did Bloomberg reporters spy on other reporters?

    So here's the most important question in the whole affair: Did Bloomberg reporters use their snooping function to spy on me, or other reporters? Perhaps. It's possible. The New York Timeshas seven machines. But a spokesperson says that none of the machines is registered to an individual reporter. They are shared by the newsroom. Bloombergs are more scarce at Dow Jones. The Wall Street Journal reporters don't have access to Bloomberg machines. But Barron'shas one. The Financial Times has a bunch of Bloombergs, but a FT spokesperson didn't get back in touch to say how many.

    A few years ago, Fortune's librarian in a moment of paranoia asked a Bloomberg help desk person whether reporters can access the questions she was asking. The answer she got back was vague and always left her wondering. But no one at Fortune remembers a time when a terminal inquiry led to Bloomberg scooping us on something. Bloomberg did beat the WSJ to theJPMorgan London Whale story, even though most people seem to credit the scoop to theWSJ. Although since the WSJ doesn't have Bloombergs, it's hard to connect that to the current snooping scandal.

    What's more, Bloomberg has a policy of withholding Bloombergs from media outlets that it considers direct competitors. So if using Bloomberg terminals to scoop other reporters was a strategy, it wasn't a coordinated effort.