Data for Sale  

Want a list of 3,877 charity donors in Detroit? You can buy it from USAData for $465.24 through USAData’s Web site, which is linked to large databases maintained by Acxiom and Dun & Bradstreet, anyone with a credit card can buy marketing lists of consumers broken down by location, demographics, and interests. The College Board sells data on graduating high school seniors to 1,700 colleges and universities for 28 cents per student. These businesses are entirely legal. Also selling data are businesses that obtain credit card and cell phone records illegally and sell to private investigators and law enforcement. The buying and selling of personal data has become a multibillion dollar business that’s growing by leaps and bounds. Unlike banks or companies selling credit reports, these private data brokers are largely unregulated.

There has been little or no federal or state oversight of how they collect, maintain, and sell their data. But they have been allowed to flourish because there is such a huge market for personal information and they provide useful services for insurance companies, banks, employers, and federal, state, and local government agencies. For example, the Internal Revenue Service and departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State paid data brokers $30 million in 2005 for data used in law enforcement and counterterrorism.

The Internal Revenue Service signed a five-year $200 milllion deal to access ChoicePoint’s databases to locate assets of delinquent taxpayers. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, ChoicePoint helped the U.S. government screen candidates for the new federally controlled airport security workforce.

ChoicePoint is one of the largest data brokers, with more than 5,000 employees serving businesses of all sizes as well as federal, state, and local governments. In 2004, ChoicePoint performed more than seven million background checks. It pocesses thousands of credit card transactions every second. ChoicePoint builds its vast repository of personal data through an extensive network of contractors who gather bits of information from public filings, financial-services firms, phone directories, and loan application forms. The contractors use police departments, school districts, the department of motor vehicles, and local courts to fill their caches. All of the information is public and legal.

ChoicePoint possesses 19 billion records containing personal information on the vast majority of American adult consumers. According to Daniel J. Solove, associate professor of law at George Washington University, the company has collected
information on nearly every adult American and “these are dossiers that J. Edgar Hoover would be envious of.”

The downside to the massive databases maintained by ChoicePoint and other data brokers is the threat they pose to personal privacy and social well being. The quality of the data they maintain can be unreliable, causing people to lose their jobs and
their savings. In one case, Boston Market fired an employee after receiving a background check from ChoicePoint that showed felony convictions. However, the report had been wrong. In another, a retired GE assembly-line worker was charged a higher insurance premium because another person’s driving record, with multiple accidents, had been added to his ChoicePoint file.

ChoicePoint came under fire in early 2005 for selling information on 145,000 customers to criminals posing as legitimate businesses. The criminals then used the identities of some of individuals on whom ChoicePoint maintained data to open fraudulent credit card accounts.

Since then ChoicePoint curtailed the sale of products that contain sensitive data, such as social security and driver’s license ID numbers, and limited access by small businesses, including private investigators, collection agencies, and non-bank financial institutions. ChoicePoint also implemented more stringent processes to verify customer authenticity.

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., believes that the ChoicePoint case is a clear demonstration that self-regulation does not work in the information business and that more comprehensive laws are needed. California, 22 other states, and New York City have passed laws requiring companies to inform customers when their personal data files have been compromised. More than a dozen data security bills were introduced in Congress in 2006 and some type of federal data security and privacy legislation will likely result. Privacy advocates are hoping for a broad federal law with a uniform set of standards for privacy protection practices.

Argue the ethical dilemma raised by data brokers, based on an ethical theory of your choice.

Please answer these questions in full with details!

1. Define positive and negative externalities; describe examples of each. What types of government policies may be appropriately applied in cases of externalities? Explain a “corrective tax”.

2.. Define and explain the relationship between Total Revenue, Total Cost, Profit, Marginal Product, Marginal Cost, and Marginal Revenue. What is the difference between “economic profit” and “accounting profit”? What is the relevance of “opportunity costs”?

Pole Position, a retailer at Destiny Mall, has a variable cost of $5 per lap driven. It has identified two segments of customers: Hard-Core drivers and Just-For-Fun drivers. For simplicity, throughout this problem, assume there is exactly one customer in each of the two segments. Market research has revealed how each segment values the experience, depending on how many laps are raced:

8. Suppose Pole Position offers customers two options: Package A provides a customer a 3-lap race for $42.99; Package B provides a customer a 8-lap race for $86.99.

1. Which package would a Hard-Core driver buy?
2. Which package would a Just-For-Fun driver buy?
3. How much profit would Pole Position earn from this pricing strategy consisting of a menu of two packages?.
4. How does the profit from 8c compare to the profits from the previous pricing strategies?

In 2006, a 50-cent piece issued in 1904 sold for $1,300. What was the rate of return on this investment? Select one: a. 9.01% b. 6.01% c. 7.01% d. 10.01% e. 8.01%

1. “The Long Tail”:
   1. A phenomenon whereby firms can make money by offering a limited selection
   2. Refers to the large number of products available through conventional retail stores
   3. A phenomenon heavily leveraged by Blockbuster in its competitive battles with Netflix.
   4. A phenomenon that leverages the fact that selection attracts customers, and that the Internet allows large-selection inventory efficiencies.                                                                                    
2. Which of the following statements is false?
   1. From an innovation standpoint, Netflix is considered an “early mover” in leveraging Internet technology to establish best-in-class brand strength.
   2. Collaborative filtering is a classification of software that monitors trends among customers, and then uses this data to personalize an individual customer’s experience.
   3. It is not possible to achieve scale in the streaming industry.
   4. Scale economies are achieved by firms that leverage the cost of an investment across increasing units of production.                                                                                                                                  
3. Which of the following statements about costs is true?
   1. Marginal costs are costs that do not vary according to the production volume.
   2. Fixed costs are costs associated with each additional unit produced.
   3. The marginal costs of digital goods are zero.
   4. There are some costs associated with digital distribution.                                                                              
4. Disintermediation:
   1. Removing an organization from a firm’s distribution channel.
   2. Expands the path between supplier and customer.
   3. Illustrated by the purchase of Comcast by NBC/Universal.
   4. In the video industry, it results in studios having to share revenue with third parties.                                        
5. Which of the following is not true of Netflix relative to most pay channels?
   1. Netflix is generally more expensive than pay channels.
   2. Netflix offers more programming than pay channels.
   3. Netflix is available in more countries worldwide than pay channels
   4. Netflix can stream to customers who do not have a cable TV subscription.                                            

There is a hill 600 feet tall the slope of the road originally has a 27% grade(slope) and it is decreased to 14% to make it a legal road in the town. legal roads have a 12-15% grade maximum. Find the length of the new road and the percentage increase between the old and new road

Design fins/convection enviornment to remove 27 W/cm² from a square copper surface (50x 50 cm) while keeping the surface at a temperature of 80^oC or below. The convection environment has a bulk temperature of 20^oC. (neglect any contact resistance between the surface and the fins)

How would you characterize an effect size of d = .27?

Negligible

Small

Medium

Large

What level of measurement is the ranking of baseball teams in the ASUN conference?

What are the three measures of central tendency? List the three measures of central tendency and provide an example of the type of data or distribution in which it is best to use each.

What are the two types of errors that can be made in statistical inference? Define each type of error.