单选题 General Wesley Clark recently discovered a hole in his personal security—his cell phone. A resourceful blogger, hoping to call attention to the black market in phone records, made his privacy-rights experiment on the general in January. For $ 89.95, he purchased, no questions asked, the records of 100 cell-phone calls that Clark had made. (He revealed the trick to Clark soon after.) "It's like someone taking your wallet or knowing who paid you money", Clark says. "It's no great discovery, but it just doesn't feel right." Since then, Clark has become a vocal supporter of the movement to outlaw the sale of cell-phone records to third parties.
The U.S.'s embrace of mobile phones—about 65% of the population are subscribers—has far outpaced efforts to keep what we do with them private. That has cleared the way for a cottage industry devoted to exploiting phone numbers, calling records and even the locations of unsuspecting subscribers for profit. A second business segment is developing applications like anonymous traffic monitoring and employee tracking.
Most mobile phones are powerful tracking devices, with global-positioning systems (GPS) inside. Companies like Xora combine GPS data with information about users to create practical applications. One similar technology allows rental-car companies to track their cars with GPS. California imposed restrictions on the practice last year after a company fined a customer $ 3,000 for crossing into Nevada, violating the rental contract.
Other applications have not yet been challenged. For about $ 26 a month per employee, a boss can set up a "geofence" to track how workers use company-issued cell phones or even if they go home early. About 1,000 employers use the service, developed by Xora with Sprint-Nextel.
The companies selling those services insist that they care about privacy. AirSage, for example, gets data from wireless carriers to monitor drivers' cell-phone signals and map them over road grids. That lets it see exactly where gridlock is forming and quickly alert drivers to delays and alternative routes. The data it gets from wireless carrier companies are aggregated from many users and scrambled, so no one can track an individual phone. "No official can use the data to give someone a speeding ticket", says Cy Smith, CEO of AirSage.
Privacy advocates say that even with those safeguards, consumers should have a choice about how their information is used. Some responsibility, of course, rests with the individual. Since his data were revealed, Clark took his mobile number off his business cards. Wireless carriers also recommend that customers avoid giving out their mobile numbers online. But Clark insists that the law should change to protect our privacy, no matter how much technology allows us to connect." One thing we value in this country", he says, "is the freedom to be left alone."
单选题 The blogger publicized General Clark's phone record ______.
  • A. to earn money from the internet
  • B. to blackmail the general for money
  • C. to play a trick on the general
  • D. to warn people of the information security
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 事实细节 本题主要考查文章第一段。原文hoping to call attention to the black market in phone records(为了让人们关注电话记录黑市交易)表明了该博主的目的。电话记录黑市卖的是他人的隐私，该博主的目的肯定是希望人们采取措施阻止这种事的发生，因为它严重损害了个人隐私权。选项D符合原文，是正确选项。 本题针对文章第一段内容命题，属于事实细节考查类题目。此类题目的正确答案一般需要在原文相关内容中寻找。 文章中出现了金钱的具体数目($ 89.95)，因此具有一定迷惑性，但文章提到的钱并非是博主赚的，而是为了搞到这些信息付出的钱。博主的目的是提醒人们关注手机记录黑市交易。选项A、B都与赚钱有关，故排除。部分考生可能会因为trick(恶作剧、把戏)一词而选择C项，博主不是为了搞恶作剧，真正目的是提醒人们关注隐私权。因此选项C应该排除。
单选题 According to Paragraph 2, mobile phones are insecure because ______.
  • A. the number of phone user increases too fast
  • B. we haven't made enough efforts
  • C. the mobile phone technology is not mature
  • D. we have ignored the information security problem
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 事实细节 根据题干定位到第二段第一句The U. S.'s embrace of mobile phones—about 65% of the population are subscribers—has far outpaced efforts to keep what we do with them private可知答案为A。 本题针对文章第二段内容命题，属于细节事实考查类题目。此类题目的正确答案一般需要在原文相关内容中寻找。 首句的outpace一词已经表明了我们也在努力，只不过跟不上手机发展速度，因此选项B、D都不符合文章原意，应该排除。选项C，正是因为手机技术太成熟，比如拥有全球定位功能，才造成了个人隐私的泄露。
单选题 What does Cy Smith mean by referring to speeding tickets?
  • A. They don't cooperate with traffic police.
  • B. They have some concern about privacy.
  • C. They don't have the business in traffic survey.
  • D. They are not able to track mobile phones.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 推理判断 根据题干可以定位到第五段，speeding tickets明显是例子。而本段主要在讨论尊重隐私权的问题，因此B为正确答案。 本题针对文章第五段内容命题，属于推理判断考查类题目。此类题目要根据原文相关内容进行推理。 选项A、C都与事例本身speeding tickets直接有关，但与文章无关，因此排除。选项D虽然从事例中抽象出来，但其表达的意思正好与原文相反，因此排除。
单选题 According to the text, what does the sentence "Some responsibility, of course, rests with the individual" mean?
  • A. Some personal information is revealed by the phone users themselves.
  • B. It is the phone users' right to decide who to blame.
  • C. Phone users should decide how their information is used.
  • D. Wireless carriers should be responsible for privacy-violation.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 事实细节 文章最后一段第二句Some responsibility，of course，rests with the individual. 文章最后一段第三句紧接着就Clark将军的事例解释了第二句Since his data were revealed，Clark took his mobile number off his business cards(自从自己的信息被泄露之后，Clark从他的商务名片上删除了手机号码)。有时候正是个人名片上的手机号码让自己的隐私被侵犯，所以说个人要负一定责任。因此，选项A符合原文，是正确选项。 本题针对文章最后一段内容命题，属于事实细节考查类题目。此类题目的正确答案一般需要在原文相关内容中寻找。 选项B不符合原文，因为原文不是讨论由谁来追究责任，因此应该排除。但本题的题干是针对某一句话的正确理解，是讨论为什么用户要对隐私泄露负一定的责任，选项C、D都明显与此无关，因此应该排除。
单选题 Which of the following proverbs is closest to the message the text tries to convey?
  • A. A burnt child dreads the fire.
  • B. As you sow, so will you reap.
  • C. A bad work man always blames his tools.
  • D. The wall has ears.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 主旨大意 本文的现象是手机信息的泄露，问题是通过手机隐私权被侵害，焦点是手机技术该不该这样运用。因此我们可以看出隐私权是本文的核心，选项D正好说明了信息安全问题，因此是正确选项。 本题针对文章全文命题，属于主旨大意考查类题目。此类题目的正确答案一般需要根据原文相关内容来进行推理。 选项A、B、C与主题不符，因此为错误选项。