Google Emrs Da - Hss 2015

Google DA
Notes
This is a DA that links to affs that increase privacy regulations
of some sort. The evidence on government privacy regulations
spilling over and hurting private companies abilities
(specifically, Google) to collect data/operate efficiently is
pretty good.
The 1NC impact is the oil dependence scenario, but we have
cards that talk about innovation/economy.
Good luck! Let us know if we can update/cut/change anything
~Myles, Ameek, Clare, Rishika
1NC Shell
1NC Google DA
Privacy regulations directly inhibit private sector data
collection and innovation
Goldfarb and Tucker 12 Avi Goldfarb, Professor of Marketing in the Rotman
School of Management at University of Toronto, has published over 50 articles in a
variety of outlets in economics, marketing, statistics, computing, and law, holds a
PhD from Northwestern, MA from Northwestern, and BAH from Queens University,
with Catherine Tucker, Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan, Chair of the MIT Sloan
PhD Program, received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the
Erin Anderson Award for Emerging Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Paul E. Green
Award for contributions to the practice of Marketing Research and a Garfield Award
for her work on electronic medical records, holds a PhD in economics from Stanford
University, and a BA from the University of Oxford, 2012 (Privacy and Innovation,
Innovation Policy and the Economy, Chicago Journals, The National Bureau of
Economic Research, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 65-90, January, Available Online via
Subscribing Institutions at JStor, Accessed 7/21/15)
The relationship between innovation and privacy policy runs deeper than this
superficial similarity suggests. This paper argues that ultimately privacy policy is
interlinked with innovation policy and consequently has potential
consequences for innovation and economic growth. Drawing on empirical
analysis of privacy regulations in online advertising and health care, we summarize
evidence that privacy regulations directly affect the usage and efficacy of
emerging technologies in these sectors. Furthermore, because these impacts
are heterogeneous across firms and products, regulations affect the direction of
innovation.
This linkage sets up a tension between the economic value created by the use of
personal data and the need to safeguard consumers privacy in the face of the use
of such data. As discussed by Hui and Png (2006), it is not straightforward to
incorporate notions of privacy into economic models, because such notions are
often based on consumer emotions as well as on strict economic concerns. As such,
it is important for regulators to balance consumer uneasiness with (or repugnance
toward) data collection and usage with the consequences such regulations may
have on certain types of innovation.
More broadly, the extent of privacy regulation should represent a trade-off between
the benefits of data-based innovation and the harms caused by violations of
consumer privacy. Much of the policy discussion appears to assume substantial
harms, perhaps citing survey evidence that people do not like to be tracked (FTC
2010). It is important to measure the size of these harms carefully, ideally in a realworld revealed-preference setting where the costs and benefits can be explicitly
traded off. These studies should be conducted across many industries and settings,
because such harms likely affect different sectors in different ways. The fact that
there may be differential effects in terms of both harm and incentives to innovate
across different sectors means that there may be potential adverse
consequences of using a single policy tool to regulate all sectors. These
adverse consequences should be set against the benefits of simplicity and

uniformity of comprehensive cross-sector privacy regulation.
Data collection is key to enhanced Google revenues and

operations
It is not new for companies to collect information about their customers.
For decades, firms have been able to buy data from external parties (such as
magazine subscription and car ownership data) and integrate it into their mailing
lists. What is new about the collection of online data is the scope of the data
collected, the precision with which the company can associated an action with a
specific customer, and the sheer quantity of information. Before online purchasing,
stores rarely observed abandoned shopping carts, statements of customer
preferences, or a complete list of all past purchases.
The quantity and precision of the data collected mean that there are benefits to
firms that offer services online from the retention and use of customer
clickstream data beyond the example of advertising described earlier. One
common innovative application is the use of data to tailor products automatically to
a consumers needs and interests. Data can also be used for immediate feedback.
Google, for example, retains user clickstream data to continuously improve both
its search algorithms and online product services, such as youtube.com,
partly on the basis of terminated user queries and actions.
Online data have also allowed the development of recommender systems that use
customers purchase decisions to offer recommendations about products of interest
to another customer. If, for example, a website observes a customer buying a DVD
of the television series Lost, it uses the purchase histories of other customers who
have also bought Lost to suggest other DVDs that the customer might also enjoy.
Dias et al. (2008) suggest that such systems can increase revenues by 0.3%.
This increase is economically significant given the relatively low cost of
implementing such systems and the high costs of increasing revenues through
alternative marketing actions. Recommender systems can also be designed to move
sales toward higher-margin items (Fleder and Hosanagar 2009).
So far, our discussion has focused on how the sharing of information collected
online has been used by firms to improve the accuracy of their efforts to increase
demand and customer satisfaction. However, improvements in information and
communication technologies allow a wide-scale collection of consumer data that
can also enhance a firms operational efficiency. At Walt Disney World, a new
operations center is designed to use detailed customer surveillance data to
minimize wait times in lines (Barnes 2010). Many financial services companies use
data to predict credit risk and to determine promotions and interest rate offers.
Another valuable type of data for operational efficiency is information about
consumer trends that enables firms to manage their supply chains more effectively.
For example, companies use data from wishlists, grocery lists, and registries online
to project future demand for certain products. Search data are also useful for
predicting demand. Choi and Varian (2009) show that data about who is searching
for what on search engines can predict travel and retail demand reasonably
accurately. Again, the collection and analysis of information, facilitated by recent
advances in information and communications technologies, has led to innovation in
the operations of firms from online retailers to theme parks to financial services
companies.
Google Self-Driving cars are key to revitalizing the economy,

reducing dependence on oil, and a more sustainable future.
Dallegro 14 Joseph A. Dallegro is a journalist and advertising copywriter living
in the New York area. He has covered business and finance, automobiles and local
interest stories for publications such as Institutional Investor, ConsumerSearch and
the Jersey City Independent. His advertising work has been profiled in CBS News,
The Huffington Post, and Adweek, 2014 ("How Google's Self-Driving Car Will Change
Everything, Investopedia, April 2014, Available Online at
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052014/how-googles-selfdriving-carwill-change-everything.asp, Accessed 7-21-2015)//CM
Imagine getting in your car, typing or speaking a location into your vehicles interface, then letting it drive you to
your destination while you read a book, surf the web or nap. Self-driving vehicles the stuff of science fiction since
the first roads were paved are coming, and theyre going to radically change what its like to get from point A to
point B. Basic Technology Already In Use The
building blocks of driverless cars are on the road
now, explained Russ Rader, senior v.p. of communications at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. He
pointed to the front-crash prevention systems that for several years have been able to warn drivers of an impending
obstacle and apply the brakes if they dont react fast enough. These systems were quickly followed by technology
allowing cars to self-park by sizing up a free spot and automatically steering into it, with the driver only controlling
the accelerator and brake pedals. Mercedes-Benz took autonomous driving even further with last years unveiling of
The first big leap to fully

autonomous vehicles is due in 2017, when Google Inc. (GOOG) said it would have an
integrated system ready to market. Every major automotive manufacturer is likely to follow by the
a steering system that works on the highway, in certain circumstances.
early 2020s, though their systems could wind up being more sensor-based, and rely less on networking and access
to map information. Google probably wont manufacture cars. More likely, itll license the software and systems. A
Drastic Change As with the adoption of any new revolutionary technology, there will be problems for businesses
that dont adjust fast enough. Futurists estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions) will be lost by
automakers, suppliers, dealers, insurers, parking companies, and many other car-related enterprises. And think of
the lost revenue for governments via licensing fees, taxes and tolls, and by personal injury lawyers and health
insurers. Who needs a car made with heavier-gauge steel and eight airbags (not to mention a body shop) if
accidents are so rare? Who needs a parking spot close to work if your car can drive you there, park itself miles
away, only to pick you up later? Who needs to buy a flight from Boston to Cleveland when you can leave in the
Googles goal is to increase car

utilization from 5-10% to 75% or more by facilitating sharing. That means fewer cars
on the road. Fewer cars period, in fact. Who needs to own a car when you can just order a
shared one and itll drive up minutes later, ready to take you wherever you want?
This [has the potential to] dramatically reduce the number of cars on the street,
80% of which have people driving alone in them, and also a household's cost of
transportation, which is 18% of their income around $9,000 a year for an asset
that they use only 5% of the time, said Robin Chase, the founder and CEO of Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer
car sharing service, and co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar. In 2030, self-driving cars are expected to
create $87 billion worth of opportunities for automakers and technology developers ,
evening, sleep much of the way, and arrive in the morning? Indeed,
said a report by Boston-based Lux Research. Software developers stand to win big. A Car Manufacturing Revolution
If youre an automaker, such as Ford Motor Co. (F), General Motors Co. (GM), Chrysler Group LLC, Toyota Motor Corp.
or Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC), which account for about 70% of the U.S. market, you could see an initial surge in
the $600 billion in annual new and used car sales in the U.S. But as soon as the technology takes hold, sales could
fall off significantly as sharing popularizes. Cars will always need steel, glass, an interior, a drivetrain and some
form of human interface (even if that interface is little more than a wireless connection to your smartphone). But
much of everything else could change. As an example, take front-facing seats; they could become an option, not a
requirement. Automakers that see change coming, such as how the big profits are secured downstream by car
servicers, insurers and more, are focusing on services as much as on what and how they manufacture.
With fewer cars around, parking lots and spaces that cover
roughly a one-third of the land area of many U.S. cities can be repurposed. That
could mean temporary downward pressure on real estate values as supply
increases. It could also mean greener urban areas, as well as revitalized suburbs, as
longer commutes become more palatable. And if fewer cars are on the road, the
federal and state governments may be able to reallocate a good portion of the
roughly $30 billion spent annually on highways. Changing Oil Demand If youre in the business of
Infrastructure Transformation
finding, extracting, refining and marketing hydrocarbons, such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (EOX), Chevron Corp. (CVX) or
These vehicles should practice

very efficient eco-driving practices, which is typically about 20% better than the
average driver, said Chase On the other hand, if these cars are owned by individuals, I see a huge rise in
BP plc (BP), you could see your business fluctuate as use changes.
the number of trips, and vehicle miles traveled. People will send out their car to run errands they would never do if
If the autonomous cars are shared vehicles

and people pay for each trip, I think this will reduce demand, and thus (vehicle miles
traveled). Safety Dividend Autonomous vehicles are also expected to be safer. These
cars won't get drunk or high, drive too fast, or take unnecessary risks things
people do all the time, Chase said. Over 90% of accidents today are caused by
driver error, said Professor Robert W. Peterson of the Center for Insurance Law and Regulation at Santa Clara
University School of Law. There is every reason to believe that self-driving cars will reduce
frequency and severity of accidents, so insurance costs should fall, perhaps
dramatically. Cars can still get flooded, damaged or stolen, notes Michael Barry, the v.p. of media relations
they had to be in the car and waste their own time.
at the Insurance Information Institute. But this technology will have a dramatic impact on underwriting. A lot of
traditional underwriting criteria will be upended. Barry said its too early to quantify exactly how self-driving
vehicles will affect rates, but added that injured parties in a crash involving a self-driving car may choose to sue the
vehicles manufacturer, or the software company that designed the autonomous capability. Initially, insurers such as
State Farm Insurance, Allstate Corp. (ALL), Liberty Mutual Group, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.s (BRK-A) GEICO,
Citigroup Inc.s (C) Travelers Group could see a huge benefit from lower accident liabilities, but wind up losing a big
portion of the $200 billion in personal auto premiums they write every year as fewer cars take to the road. Some
have even speculated that mandatory insurance for cars could be dropped. And as long as were talking about
financial services, what of the multitude of banks and creditors that lend buyers money in about 70% of car
if only 10% of the cars on U.S.

roads were autonomous, more than $37 billion of savings could be realized via less
purchases if sales volume falls? According to a University of Texas report,
wasted time and fuel, as well as fewer injuries and deaths. At 90%, the benefit rises
to almost $450 billion a year. Closer to Home Self-driving cars could have a substantial impact on the
taxi and limousine industries and could create new ones. Chase noted that they could be used to share specific trips
as a kind of pay-as-you-go small-scale public transportation taking a disparate bunch of Manhattanites to the
that a fleet of 9,000 driverless taxis could

serve all of Manhattan at about 40 cents per mile (compared to about $4-6 per mile
now). There are licenses for over 13,000 taxis in the Big Apple now. Self-driving cars may also challenge train
beach in the Hamptons, for instance. One study found
lines. A self-driving car offers much of the convenience of rail service with the added convenience that the service
is portal-to-portal rather than station-to-station, Peterson said. On the other hand, a fleet of self-driving cars
available at the station may make rail service more palatable. The technology has already been adopted in closed
systems, such as campuses, air-terminals and mining, he noted. Rio Tinto Group (RIO), a large mining company,
uses enormous self-driving trucks in its mining operations. European countries are experimenting with the
platooning of trucks. Among other things, this saves about 18% in fuel. Risks, Hurdles and the Unknown There are
regulatory and legislative obstacles to widespread use of self-driving cars, and substantial concerns about privacy
(who will have access to any driving information these vehicles store?). Theres also the question of security, as
hackers could theoretically take control of these vehicles, and are not known for their restraint or civic-mindedness.
However it plays out, these vehicles are coming and fast. Their full adoption
their convenience, cost, safety and other factors will make them
ubiquitous and indispensable. Such as with any technological revolution, the companies that plan ahead,
The Bottom Line
will take decades, but
adjust the fastest and imagine the biggest will survive and thrive. And companies invested in old technology and
practices will need to evolve or risk dying.
Oil dependence diminishes US hegemony key to combating

WMD spread, terrorism, Gulf instability
Deutch and Schlesinger 6 John Deutch, served as Deputy Secretary of
Defense, Director of Central Intelligence, Director of Energy Research, Acting
Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology, and Undersecretary of the Department,
emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a
B.A. in history and economics from Amherst College, and both the B.S. in chemical
engineering and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from M.I.T, and James R. Schlesinger,
served as Secretary of Defense under Nixon and Ford, America's first Secretary of
Energy, Director of Central Intelligence, earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in economics
from the Horace Mann School and Harvard University, 2006 (National Security
Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, Report of an Independent Task Force,
Available Online at
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Chapter_2006_National
%20Security%20Consequences_CFR.pdf, Accessed 7/22/15)
The Task Force has identified five major reasons why dependence on energy traded
in world markets is a matter of concern for U.S. foreign policy. We have also examined a
sixth, the relationship of military force structure to oil dependence.
control over enormous oil revenues gives exporting countries the flexibility to
adopt policies that oppose U.S. interests and values . Iran proceeds with a program that appears
to be headed toward acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. Russia is able to ignore Western
attitudes as it has moved to authoritarian policies in part because huge revenues
from oil and gas exports are available to finance that style of government . Venezuela
First, the
has the resources from its oil exports to invite realignment in Latin American political relationships and to fund
changes such as Argentinas exit from its International Monetary Fund (IMF) standby agreement and Bolivias recent
decision to nationalize its oil and gas resources.
Because of their oil wealth, these and other
producer countries are free to ignore U.S. policies and to pursue interests inimical to
our national security.
oil dependence causes political realignments that constrain the ability of the
United States to form partnerships to achieve common objectives. Perhaps the most
pervasive effect arises as countries dependent on imports subtly modify their
policies to be more congenial to suppliers. For example, China is aligning its relationships in
Second,
the Middle East (e.g., Iran and Saudi Arabia) and Africa (e.g., Nigeria and Sudan) because of its desire to secure oil
the European Union, are more reluctant to

confront difficult issues with Russia and Iran because of their dependence on
imported oil and gas as well as the desire to pursue business opportunities in those
countries.
supplies. France and Germany, and with them much of
These new realignments have further diminished U.S. leverage , particularly in

the Middle East and Central Asia. For example, Chinese interest in securing oil and gas supplies
challenges U.S. influence in central Asia, notably in Kazakhstan. And Russias influence is likely to grow as it exports
oil and (within perhaps a decade) large amounts of natural gas to Japan and China.
All consuming countries, including the United States, are more constrained in
dealing with producing states when oil markets are tight. To cite one current example,
concern about losing Irans 2.5 million barrels per day of world oil exports will cause
importing states to be reluctant to take action against Irans nuclear program.
high prices and seemingly scarce supplies create fears especially evident in
Beijing and New Delhi, as well as in European capitals and in Washington that the current system of
open markets is unable to ensure secure supply. The present competition has resulted in oil
and gas deals that include political arrangements in addition to commercial
terms. Highly publicized Chinese oil investments in Africa have included funding for infrastructure projects such
Third,
as an airport, a railroad, and a telecommunications system, in addition to the agreement that the oil be shipped to
China. Many more of these investments also include equity stakes for state-controlled Chinese companies. Another
example is Chinese firms taking a position in Saudi Arabia, along with several Western firms, in developing Saudi
Arabias gas infrastructure.
At present, these arrangements have little effect on world oil and gas markets because the volumes affected are
such arrangements are spreading. These arrangements are worrisome because

they lead to special political relationships that pose difficulties for the United States.
And they allow importers to believe that they obtain security through links to
particular suppliers rather than from the proper functioning of a global market.
small. However,
the United States, in the past, has also taken decisions to restrict markets
partly due to similar concerns about energy security . For example, when the trans-Alaska
pipeline opened, it included a prohibition against exporting the oil. The hostility toward proposals by the
Chinese National Overseas Oil Company (CNOOC) to purchase Union Oil of California is seen by some as
denying investment opportunity in the U.S. market in a similar manner to what the
United States decries about other nations conduct . The Task Force believes that foreign entities
We note that
should be able to purchase U.S. assets provided that the acquisitions meet the criteria established by the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).12
Opening a dialogue with rapidly growing consumers, notably China and India, can help those consumers gain
confidence that will lead to a greater willingness to allow markets to operate. (We return to this policy
recommendation later.) The United States and other consuming countries have a tremendous interest in
maintaining the present open market oil commodity trading rules.
Fourth, revenues from oil and gas exports can undermine local governance . The United
States has an interest in promoting good governance both for its own sake and because it encourages investment
States that are politically unstable and poorly

governed often struggle with the task of responsibly managing the large revenues
that come from their oil and gas exports . The elements of good governance include democratic
that can increase the level and security of supply.
accountability, low corruption, and fiscal transparency. Production in fragile democracies, such as in Nigeria, can be
undermined when politicians or local warlords focus on ways to seize oil and gas rents rather than on the longer-
Totalitarian governments that have control over those

revenue flows can entrench their rule.
term task of governance.
When markets are tight, large oil consumers have tended to become especially focused on securing supply and
ignore the effects of their investments on corruption and mismanagement. In Sudan, for example, despite civil war
and widespread human rights abuses, the Chinese government and its oil enterprises are funding extensive oil
supply and 12 Alan P. Larson and David M. Marchick, Foreign Investment and National Security: Getting the Balance
Right, a Council Special Report(New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2006). Findings: How Dependence on
Imported Energy Affects U.S. Foreign Policy 29 infrastructure projects. China has used its threat of a veto in the UN
Security Council to thwart collective efforts by other countries to manage the Darfur crisis in Sudan. Similarly,
China, India, and several Western European countries continue to invest in Iran despite the need to contain its
nuclear aspirations.
a significant interruption in oil supply will have adverse political and

economic consequences in the United States and in other importing
countries. When such a disruption occurs, it upends all ongoing policy activity in a frantic
effort to return to normal conditions. Inevitably, those efforts include matters of foreign
policy, such as coordination with other countries to find measures that will mitigate
the consequences of the supply disruption. Some of these responses may be preplanned, such as
the coordinated release of strategic reserves, but other responses will be hurried, ineffectual,
or even counterproductive.
Fifth,
Sixth, some observers see a direct relationship between the dependence of the United States on oil, especially from
if it
were not dependent on this oil, the United States and its allies would have
no interest in the region, and hence it would be possible to achieve
significant reductions in the U.S. military posture. In the extreme, this argument says
that if the nation reduced its dependence, then the defense budget could be
reduced as well.
the Persian Gulf, and the size of the U.S. defense budget. Such a relationship invites the inference that
U.S. strategic interests in reliable oil supplies from the Persian Gulf are not proportional with the percent of oil
consumption that is imported by the United States from the region. Until very low levels of dependence are
reached, the United States and all other consumers of oil will depend on the Persian Gulf. Such low levels will
certainly not be reached during the twenty-year time frame of this study.
Even if the Persian Gulf did not have the bulk of the worlds readily available oil reserves, there would be reasons to
The activities of Iran today and Iraq,

especially prior to 1991, underline the seriousness of threats from weapons of
mass destruction. Combating terrorism also requires a presence in the
Gulf. In addition to military activities, a U.S. presence in the region can help to
improve political stability.
maintain a substantial military capability in the region.
At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to U.S. interests in reliable oil supply,
nonproliferation, combating 30 National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency terrorism, and encouraging
political stability, democracy, and public welfare. Accordingly, the United States should expect and support a strong
military posture that permits suitably rapid deployment to the region, if required.
It is worthwhile to explain what should and should not be expected from this military force, and how it serves U.S.
interests. Most importantly,
the conventional force of the United States deters
aggression in the region. Any nation (or subnational group) that contemplates violence
on any scale must take into account the possibility of U.S. preemption,
intervention, or retaliation. Deterrence is powerful, but it does not always work (especially if the
possibility of a military response is not raised). For example, deterrence did not prevent the Iran-Iraq war of the
early 1980s. Because no clear and credible signal was sent of a possible response in 1990, Saddam Hussein was not
the U.S. military posture with its capacity to

intervene, if managed wisely, can play a role in stabilizing this highly fragile region and
make many countries in the region more secure from hostile action by their
neighbors.
deterred from invading Kuwait. Nevertheless,
2NC/1NR Uniqueness
They Say: Regulations Key

Status quo privacy regulations should solve their advantage
any more results in a loss of data collection capabilities
Concerns over the use of data for targeted advertising have also led to a number of
regulations designed to offer privacy protection. The first major legislation on the
issue was the European ePrivacy Directive (EC/2002/58), which predominantly
addressed the telecommunications sector. However, several provisions of the
ePrivacy Directive limited the ability of companies to track user behavior on the
Internet. These changes made it more difficult for a specific advertiser to
collect and use data about consumer browsing behavior on other websites.
The interpretation of EC/2002/58 has been somewhat controversial as it relates to
behavioral targeting. For example, it is not clear to what extent companies need to
obtain opt-in consent: the provision says only that companies who use invisible
tracking devices such as web bugs require the knowledge of consumers, and the
definition of knowledge has been extensively debated. This is one reason why, in
the recent Telecoms Reform Package, the European Union (EU) amended the
current regulation to clarify what practices are allowed. However, in general,
the limitations the current EU regulation impose on data collection by online
advertisers are widely seen as stricter than in the United States and elsewhere.
Baumer, Earp, and Poindexter (2004, 410) emphasize that the privacy laws that
resulted from the ePrivacy Directive are far stricter than in the United States and
that maintaining full compliance with restrictive privacy laws can be
costly, particularly since that adherence can result in a loss of valuable
marketing data.
There are also proposals for legislation in the United States. In particular, FTC (2010)
suggests a move to implement a do not track policy that would allow consumers
to enable persistent settings on their web browsers and prevent firms from
collecting clickstream data. A specific privacy office within the Department of
Commerce has also been suggested to monitor and regulate the use of data by
firms (USDOC 2010).
Consequences.However, such regulation will impose costs. As set out by Evans

(2009) and Lenard and Rubin (2009), there is a trade-off between the use of
online customer data and the effectiveness of advertising.
Google Revenue High

Google has an extremely high revenue now even after
spending money on driverless cars, revenues will be
sustainable
Womack 7/16 Brian Womack is a Reporter at Bloomberg News, 7-16-2015
("Google stock soars to record high on earnings beat," Globe and Mail, 7-16-2015,
Available Online at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-onbusiness/international-business/us-business/google-profit-tops-analyst-estimates-ascompany-curbs-costs/article25536408/, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
Google Inc.s stock rallied in Europe trading
after new Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat signaled plans to bring more restraint to
spending at the Internet search giant. Profit and sales topped analysts estimates in the second
Google stock soars to record high on earnings beat
quarter, and operating expenses rose at the slowest pace since 2013. On a conference call after the results were
released Thursday, Porat -- who joined the company in May from Morgan Stanley -- said she was focused on cost
As the company
seeks ways to boost revenue growth in its main Web search-advertising business
and beyond, Chief Executive Officer Larry Page has been investing in new -- and
sometimes expensive -- projects, from driverless cars to fast Internet service. Porat
has bolstered investor confidence that the company will balance spending on such
initiatives with the need to keep a tighter rein on expenses. People are realizing its a new
era, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial LP. Shes coming in and shes expressing what
investors wanted -- thats theres going to be cost rationalization, a degree of
discipline. Google shares rose about 12 percent to the equivalent of $672.88 at 8:47 a.m. in
Frankfurt. The stock gained 3.1 percent to $601.78 at the close in New York Thursday, and
has soared 11 percent since the start of July. Porats Priorities Profit before certain items in the
recent period was $6.99 a share, the company said in a statement . Sales, minus revenue passed on to
partners, rose 13 percent to $14.4 billion. Analysts on average projected $6.73 a
share in profit on $14.3 billion in sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The priority is revenue growth, Porat said on the call, her first at Google, after the report. We have
a breadth of opportunity, but pursuing revenue growth is obviously not inconsistent
with expense management. Second-quarter net income was $3.93 billion,
compared with $3.35 billion a year earlier, Mountain View, California-based Google said.
controls. Reuters Jul. 16 2015, 6:15 PM EDT Video: Google's earnings beat expectations
Revenue would have been $1.1 billion higher had foreign-exchange rates stayed constant, the company said. Porat
said Google is still investing in new businesses , just as it always has under co-founders Page and
Sergey Brin. Pursuits have included the introduction of a new wireless-phone service and tests of delivery drones
and Google Glass wearable computer, as well as forays into products like contact lenses that can track glucose
levels and kites designed to deliver clean energy. The founders are still in control and that dynamic still exists, so
shell have to deal with that going forward, said Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. The fact that she
was hired indicates that Larry and Sergey are looking for a change in the approach around expenses. Advertising
Business Google also has devoted money to improving its core advertising services,
including new tools to enable purchases directly from ads and features that aim to make the buying process simpler
The company has a wide lead in the digital-advertising market over rivals
such as Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Twitter Inc. In the recent quarter, the number of
clicks on ads rose 18 percent, compared with a 13 percent increase in the first
quarter, while the average cost per click fell 11 percent after dropping 7 percent in the prior period. Googles
for marketers.
mobile cost- per-click is climbing, helping to close the gap with desktop ads, Porat said on the call. Watch time on
YouTube, the companys video-sharing site, was up 60 percent, with mobile watch time more than doubling, she
said.
Googles revenue is at a record high

Hall 7/16 Stephen Hall is a Senior Editor of 9to5Google, 7-16-2015 ("Google
announces Q2 2015 earnings: $17.7 billion revenue, $3.93 billion net income,"
9to5Google, 7-16-2015, Available Online at
http://9to5google.com/2015/07/16/google-announces-q2-2015-earnings-17-7-billionrevenue-3-93-billion-net-income/, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
Google today has posted its earnings for Q2 2015. The company reports revenue of
$17.7 billion, which is up 11% or $15.9 billion year over year . Net income for Q2 2015 was
$3.93 billion. Of its total revenue, advertising consisted of right about $16 billion, with
Googles own websites accounting for $12.4 billion. Advertising revenue is up 11%
year over year, while that of Googles own sites are up 13 percent year over year.
Aggregate paid clicks rose 18 percent in Q2 , while cost-per-click rates fell 11 percent compared to
Q2 of 2014. Google is holding a webcast at 1:30PST/4:30EST further discussing its earnings for the first quarter of
2015, and you can find that stream embedded above.
Googles revenue is on an upward spiral sustainable growth

and improving margins prove
Cardenal 7/21 AndrS Cardenal, CFA, is a tenacious researcher of the best
investment opportunities around the world. Andres is an economist and CFA
Charterholder living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 7-21-2015 ("Google Stock at Record
Highs: Time to Take Profits, or More Growth Ahead?," Motley Fool, 7-21-2015,
Available Online at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/21/google-stockat-record-highs-time-to-take-profits.aspx, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stock was having an uninspiring year in 2015 .
Shares of the online search giant were basically flat, as investors were getting disappointed with Google's financial
However, things took a dramatic turn when Google

reported rock-solid earnings for the second quarter of 2015 last week, gaining a
staggering 16% in a single day and making new historical records for Google stock.
performance over the past several quarters.
Let's look at the main reasons Google delivered such an explosive gain in a relatively short period of time, and,
more importantly, whether the company still offers upside potential from current levels or if the best is already in
the past for investors in Google stock. Google is still growing rapidly
Google is in the midst of a
transformation.
The online advertising industry is going through major changes because of powerful emerging
trends such as the rise of mobile computing and increasing online video consumption, factors that are changing
industry dynamics. Transformations are seldom easy, and Google's revenue growth has been hurt by declining ad
prices, since channels such as mobile and YouTube typically mean lower average prices per ad. Besides, rising
costs, as the company invests huge sums of money on all kind of growth initiatives, have taken their toll on profit
Google dissipated a lot of concerns when it announced financial results for

the second quarter of 2015. Not only did earnings come in ahead of Wall Street
expectations, but management also highlighted some remarkably encouraging
trends, which bode well for investors in Google stock over the years ahead. Total
revenue during the second quarter of 2015 came in at $17.7 billion, an 11% yearover-year increase. Unfavorable currency movements were a major headwind during the period, since total
revenue in constant currency jumped by an impressive 18% versus the same quarter in the prior year. This
growth rate is nothing short of extraordinary for a company as big as Google.
Margins are improving, too: Traffic acquisition costs declined to 19% of revenue
from 21% in the second quarter of 2014, and the company managed to contain
margins. But
operating costs at reasonable levels, so adjusted operating margin rose from 32% of
sales to 34% of revenue in the last quarter. Promising trends The latest quarter was the first time
ever that Google's new CFO, Ruth Porat, led the company's earnings conference call, and what she had to say
Google is being more disciplined when it

comes to investments and expenditures, which should drive higher profit margins
over the coming quarters. In Porat's own words: The sequential deceleration in expense growth achieved
sounded like music to investors' ears. To begin with,
in the second quarter reflects in part the benefit of expense discipline discussed in prior calls. A key focus is on the
levers within our control to manage the pace of expenses while still ensuring and supporting our growth. We will do
this while we continue to invest in engineering talent to keep us preeminent in innovation globally. The company is
also making big inroads in mobile, reducing the price gap between desktop and mobile ads via an improved user
experience and enhanced ad quality. This is another major positive for investors, since it indicates that Google will
be able to sustain its enormously profitable business model under the mobile computing paradigm. According to
more Google searches are taking place on mobile devices than on

desktop in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan, two of Google's biggest markets. The company
calculates that 30% of mobile queries are related to a specific location, which provides plenty of
opportunities for growth and monetization in local search. Also, YouTube is firing on all
cylinders and consolidating Google's position as a top player in online video. Watch time on YouTube was
up by a staggering 60% year over year during the last quarter, the fastest growth
rate the platform has seen in the past couple of years. YouTube mobile watch time
more than doubled from the same period in 2014, so YouTube is rapidly expanding
on mobile devices, too. Advertising dollars are going in the same direction as consumers' eyeballs. As more
management,
viewers are increasingly going online for their video content, advertisers are jumping in to capitalize on the
opportunity. The number of advertisers running video ads on YouTube is up more than 40% year over year, and the
average spend among the 100 top advertisers is up by 60% versus the same quarter last year. The stock is priced
at a moderate premium versus the overall market: Google stock trades at a forward P/E ratio near 21, while the
average company in the S&P 500 carries a forward P/E ratio in the neighborhood of 18. Still, this doesn't sound like
it looks like
Google is well positioned for sustained growth over the years ahead, and current
valuation levels provide attractive upside room for investors in Google stock.
an excessive price tag to pay for such a leading growth company. The way things are going,
Collection High
Google largest collector of data and uses data to enhance
experience
Aronsky, 14 Eugene Aronsky is a Sr. SEO specialist at NetLZ and
holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from Seton Hall
University,(What does Google Know about Me?, Feb. 14 2014, Available online at
http://commonseoquestions.com/2014/02/14/what-does-google-know-about-me/,
Accessed online at 07-20-15)
The Internet works great when it comes to collecting information and putting the
information into our command. The privacy that was once known in America is long gone, taken away by
various different websites. Surprisingly, the biggest collector of information is Google . With so
many services offered by Google, they are able to collect a large amount of data on users. Here is a taste of what
Google knows about you and how they got the information. Data Collection Services Google collects information
through its many services. Gmail sends what information it can find to Google for safe keeping. They even index
and analyze the e-mails that you throw away. Why it collects this information is to serve as the relevant ads that
Google also collects information about what you buy, where you
buy it, how much of it you buy, and how you pay for it. Google explains that this
data is for the analytics and demographics data that can be derived from the
material. Powerful Data Collection Tools If you own an Android Smartphone, you would be surprised what data
Google presents you with.
Google has about you. They likely have your whole contact list, what phone numbers you called when, and even
they have information stored about your Mobile network as

well as your ISP. Chrome OS is another powerful data collection tool of Google . So,
who you call often. On top of that,
What do They Have? Google most definitely has your full name if you have signed up for any kind of service through
them. They keep this information and store it for future reference. You physical street address is also likely known
by Google. Your Google Maps could have shared this information, or services like AdSense or Checkout. Having a
Gmail account grants Google your phone number. Google can tell when you are online, what your latest IP address
was, and even your interests. Google gets information from Google Reader as well as your Google Bookmarks. Your
bookmarks can contain a massive amount of information. More? Google Web History and the Google Toolbar keeps
track of every website that you go to. Google Notebook contains your To Do list. Google Calendar contains
information about your most important appointments. Through your Gmail Contacts, Google gains information
about everyone that you know. Gmail and Google Talk know what you are saying. Google finances keeps a record of
what stocks that you own. Google has access to your bank account and your routing number. Google Analytics If
you have a blog, Google Analytics is able to track a large variety of stats. Google knows when you publish a blog,
how popular it is, and even who is reading it. By having personal pictures in Picasa Web Albums, Google knows what
you look like. Google can plug your information into a search database and come up with every site that you have
Googles Privacy Policy Googles Privacy Policy states that everyones

privacy is important to them. They now only save 18 months worth of search data.
This data is also completely anonymous. A large amount of data can be learned from behaviors
online. By combining a large body of data with Googles massive computer power,
they can get an excellent idea of how to shape products that meet users needs.
an account at.
Information Technology Google gains more and more information from users every day. Questions about how big
Google is allowed to get and whether the government needs to step in and regulate this overwhelming amount of
Having this amazing collection of

data is great, but if used by the wrong hands, the information could be used in a lot of different bad ways. If
you want to know what information Google has on you, it is easy to find out. The first
data that gets collected should be on the tips of everyones tongues.
step is to sign in to your account with Google. Once signed in, visit https://www.google.com/dashboard. This will
Google is not going

anywhere and their reign at the top of the internet world is just beginning . They are
able to collect a large amount of data about the users of their products. Google knows
show you some of the information that they have collected about you already.
more about you than you think.
2NC/1NR Links/ILs
They Say: Regulations Dont Hurt

Privacy protections undermine Googles ability to function.
ElectroSpaces, 9/15/14 (What if Google was an Intelligence Agency?,
Available Online at http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-if-google-wasintelligence-agency.html, Accessed online at 07-21-15
Google security practices are generally considered state of the art and the company
recently announced support for end-to-end encryption in GMail, but the body of messages
will remain unencrypted on Google's servers and accessible to the company's bots. In october 2013, Google
became aware of a covert network penetration lead by the NSA, targeting
communications links connecting the company's data centers, which were not encrypted.*
The exact amount of user data which may have been collected by the NSA during the operation is still unclear. Google privacy policy is sometimes cloudy, and users trying to get informed about what data they release to
Google, how this data will be used and how long it will be retained, have to sift through disclaimer pages scattered
Google has to bring more

accountability and transparency abo1ut what is shared from its users . The user data that
on Google's websites. - As a major stakeholder in the worldwide web,
could potentially be provided to law enforcement agencies should be clearly and precisely marked as such. It should
become clear to all users that some of their data, whether it's personal information, files, e-mails, messages,
metadata from network traffic or phone calls, or even recorded communications may become available to
intelligence services. - Also,
Google should clarify if this information can be provided only to

the law enforcement agencies of the user's country of residence or also to United
States government agencies, as Google is an American company with most of its
servers and activities in the US. - American web companies and cloud operators are facing growing
critics about their vulnerability to US intelligence operations. Some in Europe advocates for
sovereign "national clouds" restricting data retention and traffic between secured
servers and users, forbidding access to the American government . During an hearing
before the United States Senate in November 2013, Richard Salgado, Google's director for law
enforcement and information security, stated that "in the wake of press reports about the so-called
"PRISM" program", he was concerned by the trend of "data localization" that could result
in the creation of a "splinternet" and the "effective Balkanization of the Internet".
Data localization would also probably cost more to Google, and would place the company under the
law of each country where the company processes user data. In many cases Google argued that it was established
in the United States and therefore was not subjected to the law of European countries, as all data processing occurs
in the USA. However in France, Google was imposed a (small) financial penalty as the administrative authority made
clear that the company had to comply with the French Data Protection Act. - Google cannot condone a systematic
A call to reform US government surveillance

laws cannot be considered enough. Google must implement proactive measures,
reinforcing its network security, offer end-to-end encryption for all of its services,
securely distribute users' files hosting in their countries of residence and better
inform its users of privacy risks. These measures could be seen as costly, but are necessary
to maintain the trust of Google's user base and main source of revenue . Google has
breach of confidentiality and privacy of its users.
massive technical capabilities for user data retention, metadata collection, telecommunications monitoring,
The main
difference is that Google has a different goal (commercial) than an intelligence agency, but this
also makes that Google gathers far more data than an intelligence agency is legally
allowed to do.
localization, mapping and imaging, all which could allow it to act as an intelligence agency.
They Say: Data Not Key to Google

Data is key Googles advancement as a company increasing
privacy protections eliminates that data hindering
technological innovation.
Harris 11 Derrick Harris, Senior Writer and Technology Journalist at Gigaom,
2011 (Will a Crackdown on Privacy Kill Big Data Innovation?, Gigaom, May 16th,
Available Online at https://gigaom.com/2011/05/16/will-a-crackdown-on-privacy-killbig-data-innovation/, Accessed on 07-22-15)
As the reports authors note, policymakers will play an important role in enabling
future big data advances, both technologically and strategically. They point out and
briefly discuss six issues facing policymakers:
1. Build human capital for big data
2. Align incentives to promote data sharing for the greater good
3. Develop policies that balance the interests of companies wanting to create value
from data and citizens wanting to protect their privacy and security
4. Establish effective intellectual property frameworks to ensure innovation
5. Address technology barriers and accelerate R&D in targeted areas
6. Ensure investments in underlying information and communication technology
infrastructure
Ive given this issue a lot of thought over the past few months, and I think No. 3 is
the key issue not just for the future of big data, but for the future of the web in
general. Unless theres a well-reasoned balance developed between consumer
privacy and business interests, goals such as information sharing and an increased
pace of innovation could fall victim to the federal governments heavy hand. As I
explained in January, Congress is considering its strategy for regulating online
privacy, but its an issue strewn with pitfalls. Here are a couple of thoughts Ive
been mulling lately:
Proposed federal regulations could hamstring technological innovation: For
example, two proposed federal regulations the Federal Trade Commissions Do
Not Track policy (which has just been endorsed by several senators in the form of
the Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011) and the Department of Commerces Fair
Information Practice Principles have the potential to seriously hamper big data
and analytics innovations, illustrating the importance of striking the right
balance. The regulations are fairly complex in their current states, but they strive
for two separate but interrelated goals, respectively: giving consumers the ability to
proactively opt out of certain data-tracking practices and giving consumers all the
information upfront and crystal-clear about how sites are using their data.
Both limit to some degree what sites can track, how they can do it, and
impose penalties for violations. My concern and one echoed by Google in its
recent opposition to Californias proposed Do Not Track legislation is that
customer data has driven the innovation of numerous key big data technologies by
major web sites, including Hadoop (within Facebook and Yahoo, especially), NoSQL
databases and many of Googles tools and projects. McKinsey highlights many of
these among the list of technologies enabling big data. Will putting companies
analytics efforts at the mercy of consumers, and under the thumb of the
federal government, reduce desire to innovate because they fear penalties
or because they simply dont have the relevant data required to do so?
Social media and the personalized could be jeopardized. This is directly related to
the above concern, but is more wide-reaching. Social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter and Foursquare, and larger-scope web sites such as Google, innovate on big
data technologies because their services rely on data. The only way to optimize and
create a better user experience is to draw better insights into customers activities,
interests and connections. And the only way (or, at least, the primary way) to make
money from such services is via targeted advertising. Its the data that drives
Googles huge advertising revenues, which pay for its myriad free
services, and Facebook to an $80 billion valuation. Im not suggesting Facebook or
Google are going to fold in the face of proposed regulations, just that their services
could suffer. Less data and more regulations means less innovation and
fewer risks taken. This might be a boon for privacy, but its a hindrance in the
fast-moving web world, where major changes come from rewriting code as opposed
to physically building a new project, and where services can be improved on the fly
as issues arise.
Dont get me wrong, consumers deserve more information and the federal
government is right to attempt to give it to them, but everyone needs to get
educated on the connection between data collection and usage and the benefits
they provide. If consumers value their social media and personalized web
experiences, and if the government is serious about pushing analytics as a major
skill set for the next-generation economy, they need to consider the issue of big
data in terms of its pros as well as in terms of its obvious cons such as privacy and
security implications. It might be tempting to clamp down on data practices or to
click do not track and shut off the personal-data firehose, but such decisions could
have far greater implications than meets the eye.
They Say: No Spillover

The plan builds on the virtuous cycle for privacy to create more
reforms.
Ozer 12 Nicole Ozer, the Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director at the
ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC), where she developed the organization's
Demand Your dotRights online privacy campaign, 2012 (Putting Online Privacy
Above The Fold: Building A Social Movement And Creating Corporate Change New
York University Review of Law & Social Change, Lexis)
As noted in Part I, n226 one of the primary challenges of establishing a privacy
social movement is sustainability. While the privacy community has had success in
the past in addressing specific incidents, these successes did not initially lead to a
coherent and sustainable privacy social movement. n227 More recently, however,
advocates have successfully leveraged the environmental changes discussed in Part
II to win specific battles to protect individual privacy. The privacy community has
also used those victories to reinforce the climate for change and support the
discussion necessary to sustain the nascent social movement. This has helped to
create a much-needed "virtuous cycle" n228 in which each successful
advocacy effort reinforces awareness of the ongoing issues concerning
online privacy and makes it easier both to challenge specific practices in
the future and to lay the groundwork for broader-reaching change.
Privacy protections from the government spillover into the

private sector and inhibit services
Anderson 14 Dan Anderson, staff writer for E-Net News, Elon Universitys
academic newspaper, 2014 (Elon University & Pew Research Center report on the
future of privacy, December 16th, Available Online at https://www.elon.edu/enet/Article/105454, Accessed on 07-20-15)
Mark Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said,
Within 10 years, there will be much more contentious battles over the control of
identity, mobility, communications and private life. The appropriation of personal
facts for commercial valuean issue that began to emerge this year with Google
and Facebook's sponsored storiesare a small glimpse of what lies ahead. Bob
Briscoe, chief researcher in networking and infrastructure for British Telecom,
observed, Society's memory is shortStalinism, Maoism, Nazism, and McCarthyism
happened too long ago to worry about. Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center
at the City University of New York, wrote, Government, threatened by the
redistribution of power brought by the Net, could succeed in claiming sovereignty
over it, throttling its freedoms. Business could overstep its trust with
consumers and bring regulation into place. Media could succeed in breeding
moral panictechnopanicover anything that could go wrong. But, I hope that
enlightened self-interest will prevail. Andrew Bridges, a partner and Internet law
litigator and policy analyst at Fenwick & West LLP, wrote, "There will be no trusted
privacy-rights infrastructure that is effective against government surveillance.
Unless government surveillance of all aspects of society and of all individuals gets
under control, all norms about privacy will become hollow, and the expectation of
privacy will be nil. We will have to reorder all our actions to reflect the reality that
there is no privacy except for the secrecy associated with the Security Class,
namely those persons who get to know about others without their own actions and
knowledge being known. Alex Halavais, a social sciences professor at Arizona
State, said, Our language around privacy may evolve. The word, on its own, is too
broad to encapsulate the broad range of concerns. Until the issue of privacy is
appropriately segmented, we will have a tough time either talking about it or
addressing it. Vint Cerf, Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist,
responded, Corporations and service providers will feel pressure to implement
practices including two-factor authentication and end-to-end cryptography. Users
will insist on having the ability to encrypt their email at need. They will demand
much more transparency of the private sector and, especially, their
governments. Privacy conventions will evolve in online societyviolations of
personal privacy will become socially unacceptable. Of course, there will be
breaches of all these things, but some will be accompanied by serious social and
economic downsides and, in some cases, criminal charges. Craig Newmark,
founder of Craigslist, wrote, "If capable people of good willon both policy and tech
sidescan connect, then this can happen. Alice Marwick, author of Status Update,
predicted, It will be quite difficult to create a popularly-accepted and trusted
privacy rights infrastructure. This is for a number of reasons. First, countries,
regions, and cultures differ in their approaches to privacy. Alf Rehn of Abo Akademi
University wrote, As privacy is becoming increasingly monetized, the incentive to
truly protect it is withering away, and with so much of policy run by lobbyists,
privacy will be a very expensive commodity come 2025. Some of us will be able to
buy it, but most will not. Privacy will be a luxury, not a rightsomething that the
well-to-do can afford, but which most have learnt to live without.
Privacy restrictions on governments shift the debate to

corporate privacy rules
Langenderfer and Miyazaki 9 Jeff Langenderfer, Vice President at Fifth
Third Bank, previous District Manager at Huntington National Bank, holds a
Bachelors Degree in Business and Finance from the University of Toledo, and
ANTHONY D. MIYAZAKI, Anthony D. Miyazaki, Chair Head and Professor of the
Department of Marketing in the College of Business at Florida International
University, holds a PhD in Business Administration from University of South Carolina,
holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Utah,
2009 (Privacy in the Information Economy, The Journal of Consumer Affairs,
Volume 43, Issue No. 3, pp. 380-388, Fall, Available Online via Subscribing
Institutions to JStor, Accessed 7/20/15)
Relatively early in the computer age, it became apparent to U.S. law makers that
the ability to assemble vast amounts of electronic information implicated privacy
rights. The Privacy Act of 1946 controls the use of information held in federal
government records by restricting disclosure of personally identifiable data,
granting individuals the right to access information about them held in
governmental records, allowing individuals the opportunity to amend federal
records upon a demonstration of inaccuracy, and requiring federal agencies to
adhere to particular standards of record keeping and maintenance.7 The Act was
later amended to establish standards when federal agencies exchange computer
records through matching programs under the Computer Matching and Privacy
Protection Act.8
Although these statutes accomplished a great deal to ensure the fairness of
governmental record keeping within the United States, federal regulation of private
information practices is uneven at best and applies only to certain kinds of records.
Educational,9 medical,10 and credit data11 are all subject to specific legislative
provisions as are video rental records,12 but for many areas of record keeping in
private hands, federal regulation is minimal or absent.
Largely free from federal control are such potentially sensitive areas as purchases
histories for consumer products, web surfing history, employment records, and
many types of insurance data. Even financial records, some of the most sensitive of
any kind of privately held personal information, is only minimally federally
regulated, with financial institutions required to provide consumers with opt-out
options from information sharing among unaffiliated companies. In other words, it is
possible, if a person takes the affirmative step, to prevent a financial institution
from selling a customer's bank balance, loan payment history, and debt level to
other interested companies willing to buy the data.13 But few customers take
actually opt out, most don't even read the privacy notices (Winkler 2001), and many
have little knowledge regarding the privacy regulations affecting various types of
firms (Turow, Hennessy and Bleakley 2008). The onus is on the customers to control
data sharing the institution owns the data, not the customerand information
flow is largely unimpeded.
The consequence of this regulatory void is that as private data collection has grown
commensurate with the development of inexpensive computing powerconcern
about the privacy implications of nongovernmental data sharing has
grown also. A May 20, 2009 ABI/Inform Global search for "privacy" in the title of a
scholarly journal articles published since January 1, 2003 reveals 568 papers. Of
these, virtually all of them deal with the threat to privacy posed by private data
collection or the mechanics of information safeguarding. One hundred fifty-eight
articles focused on computer security, 108 on electronic commerce, 144 dealt with
governmental privacy regulation, 46 focused on medical data, 23 on privacy in the
workplace, and 11 on identity theft. Only 32 dealt in any way with consumer
responses to the current commercial data explosion, and of those, all but 10 were
devoted to online privacy. In a world that relies largely on consumers to manage
their own privacy, privacy concern has evolved from a fear of intrusion to a
generalized unease regarding the power that comes from easily
accessible, personally identifiable data, with each area of sensitive
information the subject of separate scrutiny.
To be sure, intrusion has not disappeared completely from the radar of privacy
advocates, particularly in the wake of heightened governmental security practices
put into place following the events of September 11, 2001. But the lion's share of
the attention is surely on information gathering and exchange and the felt intrusion
that comes with the knowledge that anyone can easily discover a great deal about
anyone else, from their desktop, with a modicum of skill, at little or no cost.
Against this backdrop of shifting privacy attention comes this special issue on
privacy literacy. Because federal lawmakers have adopted, in the main, a hands-off
approach with respect to private data collection and exchange, it has become
increasingly incumbent upon individuals to take an active role in the ways they
safeguard their own personal information. Privacy literacy is the understanding that
consumers have of the information landscape with which they interact and their
responsibilities within that landscape. It is an area that demands understanding in a
climate where the responsibility for privacy rests largely in the hands of the
consuming public, and lack of literacy may have important implications.
A series of articles focusing on privacy literacy highlight the Fall 2009 issue of the
Journal of Consumer Affairs. Youn writes insightfully and eloquently about student
privacy concerns and their coping behavior (Youn 2009). Podar, Mosteller, and Ellen
(2009) explore, through a series of depth interviews, the ways in which consumers
protect them selves online. Using a more quantitative approach, Milne, Labrecque
and Cromer (2009) also examine privacy protection practices in risky environments.
And Stanaland, Lwin and Leong (2009) detail the responses that web sites make to
different regulatory environments. To finish the special issue, an intuitive article by
Norberg, Home and Home (2009) calls for the inclusion of the self in the privacy
debate, an alert that may help set the agenda for the privacy debates to come. But
to where from here? Though state legislators and, in some cases, state courts have
periodically stepped into the regulatory void, the state of information control
remains an uneven regulatory patchwork (Langenderfer and Cook 2001).
The debate has changed from government invasion to private information
sharing, with intrusion and loss of privacy experienced not from police entering the
sanctity of the home, but from corporate entities compiling long and accurate
dossiers regarding virtually every aspect of our existence. Indeed, it seems that,
given the ubiquity of private data sharing and the importance of the accuracy of
many data centers, we are increasingly defined by the information that databases
store about us. For celebrities, being defined by others may seem normal. For most
citizens who have yet to experience their 15 minutes of fame, self-definition would
seem to be an inalienable right.
Distrust toward government surveillance leads to distrust toward the

private sector.
Diaz 13 Claudia Diaz, Assistant professor at the KU Leuven Department of
Electrical Engineering, COSIC (Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography) in
Belgium, 2013 (SYMPOSIUM: The Second Wave of Global Privacy Protection: Hero
or Villain: The Data Controller in Privacy Law and Technologies, 74 Ohio St. L.J. 923,
Available Online at Subscribing Institutions via LexisNexis, Accessed on 07-20-15)
Constitutional privacy protections treat centralized power with distrust and require
effective checks, balances, and safeguards against government surveillance. Over
the past two decades, as individuals' daily lives have become increasingly mediated
by technologies, government institutions have enhanced their surveillance powers
through tightening collaboration with private sector entities, to create a "surveillant
assemblage." Findings about the extent of government and private sector
surveillance have recently reached the zenith with the constant drumbeat of
revelations about the NSA and GCHQ. Information privacy law, a legal framework
arising in the 1970s to protect individuals' data privacy, provides little protection
against such surveillance risks. This relatively new legal framework bridges two
distinct trust paradigms: one assuming that data controllers are trusted entities, the
other assuming that, in a similar vein to the constitutional framework, data
controllers should be treated with suspicion and distrust. Over the past few years,
the legal framework has shifted from focusing on data minimization, a cornerstone
of the untrusted controller model, to imposing information stewardship obligations
on data controllers who are increasingly viewed as custodians of individuals' rights.
These obligations, typically grouped under the title "accountability," are based on a
notion of the data controller as a trusted party. In stark contrast, the technological
community researching PETs proceeds from a diametrically opposed perception of a
data controller, that of an adversary. Under this approach, information disclosed to a
data controller is compromised and can no longer be viewed as private, given that a
data controller itself may subject individuals to persistent surveillance.
Inter users will soon demand privacy from the private sector,
not just the government.
Rainie and Anderson 14 Lee Rainie, Director of Internet, Science, and
Technology at the Pew Research Center, Janna Anderson, Director of the Imaging the
Internet Center at Elon University, 2014 (The Future of Privacy, Pew Research
Center, Available Online at
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/12/PI_FutureofPrivacy_1218141.pdf, Accessed
on 7-21-15)
A variety of views in regard to this issue are reflected in these big thinkers
imaginings of what may happen by 2025.
Social punishment may have to be accompanied by legislation
Vint Cerf, Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist, responded, The
public will become more sophisticated about security and safety. Corporations and
service providers will feel pressure to implement practices including two-factor
authentication and end-to-end cryptography. Users will insist on having the ability
to encrypt their email at need. They will demand much more transparency of
the private sector and, especially, their governments. Privacy conventions will
evolve in online societyviolations of personal privacy will become socially
unacceptable. Of course, there will be breaches of all these things, but some will
be accompanied by serious social and economic downsides and, in some cases,
criminal charges. By 2025, people will be much more aware of their own negligent
behavior, eroding privacy for others, and not just themselves. The uploading and
tagging of photos and videos without permission may become socially
unacceptable. As in many other matters, the social punishment may have to be
accompanied by legislationthink about seat belts and smoking by way of example.
We may be peculiarly more tolerant of lack of privacy, but that is just my guess.
Since intelligence agencies rely on private companies for the

data, the private sectors relationship with consumers are also
at risk.
EFF 14 Electronic Frontier Foundation, leading non-profit organization defending
privacy and civil liberties, 2014 (Big Data in Private Sector and Public Sector
Surveillance, EFF, April 8th, Available Online at
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/08/eff-big-data-comments.pdf, Accessed on 7-2115, NYL)
How should the policy frameworks or regulations for handling big data differ
between the government and the private sector? Please be specific as to the type of
entity and type of use (eg, law enforcement, government services, commercial,
academic research, etc.).
First, government use of big data is inherently subject to constitutional constraints,
while private sector use of big data is typically subject only to statutory constraints,
with two significant caveats. In California, for example, private actors are subject to
the state constitutional privacy right. And even under the federal constitution,
private actors can in some circumstances violate individual rights under the state
action doctrine. Of particular importance are the predication and particularity values
of the Fourth Amendment, the due process values of the Fifth Amendment, the
reasoned elaboration values of Article III courts and the democratic accountability of
the Constitution itself.
Second, the policy framework for law enforcement and intelligence uses of big data
is distinguishable from most other contexts by its lack of transparency. Obviously,
law enforcement and intelligence agencies typically collect data in secret and
without the consent of the people being surveilled. Secrecy also interferes with
public knowledge about these surveillance practices and technologies. Particularly
in the intelligence realm, the system of classified information and the state
secrets privilege distorts normal processes of democratic accountability
essential to legitimate constitutional government. And because these law
enforcement and intelligence agencies often rely on data collected by the
private sector, these distortions also directly affect individuals trust
relationships with business.
They Say: Privacy Violations are Intrusive

Googles data collection for the purpose of online advertising
is not invasive and increases innovation.
Online advertising is perhaps the most familiar example of how firms use the rich
data provided by users of information and communication technology. Online
advertising is also distinctive among advertising media in its application of detailed
data collection. Key to this data collection effort are two important differences
between online advertising and offline advertising targetability and
measurability. Targetability reflects the collection and use of data to determine
which kind of customers are most likely to be influenced by a particular ad.
Measurability reflects the collection and use of data to evaluate whether the
advertising has actually succeeded (Goldfarb and Tucker 2011a). Targetability and
measurability have helped make advertising-supported Internet companies, such as
Google and Facebook, among the fastest growing and most innovative in
the U.S. economy.
Targeting occurs when an advertiser chooses to show an ad to a particular subset of
potential viewers and displays the ad online to that subset rather than to everyone
using the media platform. An example would be choosing to advertise cars to
people who have recently browsed web pages devoted to car reviews and ratings.
No newspaper or television station can offer this level of targeting. The targetability
of online advertising can be thought of as reducing the search costs to advertisers
of identifying consumers. Targeting advertising has always been known to be
desirable, but Internet advertising has two primary advantages over offline
advertising. First, the online setting makes it virtually costless for advertisers to
collect large amounts of customer data. Second, Internet technology makes it
relatively easy to serve different customers different ads because packets are sent
to individual computers. In contrast, with current technology, targeting individual
customers with newspaper or TV ads is prohibitively expensive.
These innovative targeting methods require media platforms to collect
comprehensive data about the web pages that customers have browsed.
Typically, advertisers and website owners track and identify users using a
combination of cookies, flash cookies, and web bugs. Many advertising networks
have relationships with multiple websites that allow them to use these technologies
to track users across websites and over time. By examining past surfing and click
behavior, firms can learn about current needs as well as general preferences.
Reflecting the value of this behavioral targeting to firms, Beales (2010) documents
that in 2009 the price of behaviorally targeted advertising was 2.68 times the price
of untargeted advertising. Lambrecht and Tucker (2011) further show that the
performance of behavioral targeting can be improved when combined with
clickstream data that help to identify the consumers degree of product search.
Increasing Privacy Protections will result in decreased

operation efficiency. Googles surveillance is not a massive
violation of privacy.
Lenard and Rubin 09 , Thomas M. Lenard, Professor and Senior
Fellow at Tech Policy Institute and Paul Rubin, Professor of Economics at
Emory University and Ph. D for Purdue University (IN DEFENSE OF
DATA:INFORMATION AND THE COSTS OF PRIVACY,Tech Policy Institute, May
2009,Available online at https://www.techpolicyinstitute.org/files/in%20defense
%20of%20data.pdf, Accessed 07-16-2015)
At the highest level of data collection,
users can opt in for Google's "Web History" service for
users with Google accounts
(those who use Gmail, Google Documents, Google Reader, or most other
Data are available both to the user

for future reference and to Google itself for analysis. Yahoo! offers and uses data collected by
these applications for behavioral targeting in advertising. Users concerned about ensuring personal
privacy when using search engines have a variety of technological tools at their
disposal to choose a level of activity-monitoring with which they are comfortable .
Search engines provide some of these themselves ; for example, users can opt out of Googles
Google services), which tracks, indexes, and archives search history.
Web History (which is opt-in to begin with), pause monitoring, or delete their collected search and browsing history
altogether. Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN also allow users to opt out of similar behavioral targeting systems.
Other
privacy protections rely on clientside techniques. Users of Internet Explorer and Firefox can
easily delete Google's tracking cookie, which is essential for tying together separate personal data streams. In
several free browser extensions and utilities can clear the cookie or require
Google to provide a new one at the start of each browsing session. Web proxies and
anonymizing applications like Tor easily conceal user IP addresses , although because of their
addition,
architecture they often reduce bandwidth speeds. At the most basic level, a dedicated user could potentially even
The
costs in time and difficulty of these solutions tend to increase as the desired level of
privacy increases, but minor actions can have huge marginal effects on privacy protectionfor example,
spoof TCP source addresses to prevent Google from monitoring immediately previous search results.
opting out of Web History takes only a few clicks but prevents collection of a significant amount of personal data,
whereas browsing entirely anonymously requires more effort to set up. Finally, all major search engines offer
privacy policies in compliance with the requirements of both United States and European data security laws. These
policies disclose the 22 companies use of personal information and require user notification and consent before
Users of search engines essentially face a tradeoff

between protecting their personal privacy and the speed and relevance of their
search results. As personalized search algorithms and behavioral targeting
techniques grow in popularity and precision, this tradeoff will likely become more
transferring personal information to others.
and more evident to the everyday user of search technolog y. Considering the current
availability and ease of use of tools for protecting personal information, the greatest threat to
individual privacy is not search engines themselves, but the governments
that may seek their records. Companies vary in the degree to which they have protected data from
government requests. In 2006, Google resisted a Justice Department subpoena for millions of user search records,
while Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN complied and handed over detailed server logs. It is unclear whether search engines
have aided government agencies in other surveillance efforts. Google declared publicly in March 2008 that it was
this statement does not rule out the

possibility of collaboration in other monitoring schemes. Could search engines exist and
not part of the NSAs Terrorist Surveillance program, but
organize information without collecting any personal information? They couldconsider Googles early years, when
Google attributes much of

its success in developing better search algorithms to careful analysis of consumer
behavior that is stored in its logs. Going forward, it is likely that user information will
continue to be useful in providing searchers with relevant results and sustaining the
business model that makes free search engines viable.
search rankings were based primarily on analysis of incoming links. However,
They Say: Private Sector Bad

Private sector data collection allows for innovation and more
restricting that would detrimental for society
New 2/5, (Joshua, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation. He has a
background in government affairs, policy, and communication. Prior to joining the
Center for Data Innovation, Joshua graduated from American University with
degrees in C.L.E.G. (Communication, Legal Institutions, Economics, and
Government) and Public Communication, A Lot of Private-Sector Data is Also Used
for Public Good, Center for Data Innovation, 2/5/2015,
http://www.datainnovation.org/2015/02/a-lot-of-private-sector-data-is-also-used-forpublic-good/) BBer
The unprecedented collection of data by the private sector has been a boon for the
average citizen, but government restrictions could have a chilling effect. As
the private sector continues to invest in data-driven innovation, the
capacity for society to benefit from this data collection grows as well . Much
has been said about how the private sector is using the data it collects to improve
corporate bottom lines, but positive stories about how that data contributes to the
greater public good are largely unknown. This is unfortunate, because data collected by
the private sector is being used in a variety of important ways, including to
advance medical research, to help students make better academic
decisions and to provide government agencies and nonprofits with
actionable insights. However, overzealous actions by government to restrict
the collection and use of data by the private sector are likely to have a
chilling effect on such data-driven innovation. Companies are working to
advance medical research with data sharing. Personal genetics company 23andMe, which offers its
customers inexpensive DNA test kits, has obtained consent from three-fourths of its 800,000 customers to donate
their genetic information for research purposes. 23andMe has partnered with pharmaceutical companies, such as
to advance genomics research by providing scientists with the data

needed to develop new treatments for diseases like Crohns and Parkinsons. The
company has also worked with researchers to leverage its network of customers to
recruit patients for clinical trials more effectively than through previous protocols.
Private-sector data is also helping students make more informed decisions
about education. With the cost of attending college rising, data that helps make this investment
worthwhile is incredibly valuable. The social networking company LinkedIn has built tools that provide
Genentech and Pfizer,
prospective college students with valuable information about their potential career path, field of study and choice of
school. By analyzing the education tracks and careers of its users, LinkedIn can offer students critical data-driven
insights into how to make the best out of the enormous and costly decision to go to college. Through LinkedIns
higher-education tools, students now have an unprecedented resource to develop data-supported education and
Government agencies and nonprofits, which often lack the

capacity to do their own large-scale collection and analysis, are using data
from the private sector to advance their own missions . The nonprofit organization
career plans.
GiveDirectly discovered that the materials used for housing, such as metal roofs versus cheaper, homemade
The group now analyzes satellite

imagery from Google Maps to identify the poorest households in Uganda to prioritize
aid delivery. Elsewhere in Uganda, a United Nations project has begun mining Facebook data to better
thatched roofs, are a good indicator of economic status in rural Africa.
understand perceptions surrounding contraception and teenage pregnancy in an effort to improve public health
outcomes.
By analyzing the content of Facebook posts, UN workers have begun to
better understand attitudes towards condom use, abstinence, teen pregnancy and
HIV/AIDS incredibly valuable information in a country where one in four girls
between the age of 15 and 19 are pregnant and 7.2% of adults have HIV and
increase the efficacy of the policies and programs to address these public health
concerns. Finally, in the United States a researcher at the Food and Drug
Administration mined 1.4 million electronic health records from health insurer Kaiser
Permanente to determine that the popular arthritis and pain drug Vioxx posed
serious health risks and should be withdrawn from the market. These beneficial
uses of private-sector data are not just one-off, isolated occurrences
just this past month two major tech companies have offered to put
valuable and even potentially life-saving data to good use for the public.
Facebook will now start matching users location data to Amber Alerts to rapidly
spread awareness about missing children, and Uber will be donating its anonymized transportation
data to city governments to help reduce congestion and enable better city planning. However, it is
important to keep in mind that many of these success stories could have
been blocked by rules limiting data collection or unnecessarily restricting
data reuse. If researchers had not been allowed to analyze data from the
electronic health records of Kaisers patients, it might have taken more time to
prove the harmful effects of Vioxx. The takeaway for policymakers should be that data, even
or perhaps especially in the hands of the private sector, has enormous
potential to improve societal welfare, and so government should be
cautious about implementing well-intended restrictions that limit datadriven innovation.
They Say: No Adoption

Googles cars will get adopted efficiency and current
adoption is increasing
Fancher 14, Lou Fancher is a Reporter for the SF Weekly, 2014
( Hard Drive: Self-Driving Cars Are Closer Than They Appear ,
February 2014,Available at http://www.sfweekly.com/2014-0219/news/google-self-driving-cars-center-for-automotive-researchdarpa/, Accessed 07-26-15)
Before 2009, it was a secret. In 2010, it became an announcement. And from 2011 on,
Google's self-driving car program has been an intriguing spectacle . Now, five years
on, Google cars regularly traverse Bay Area byways, sensing their surroundings and
operating off internalized maps. At a late-January lecture at Livermore's Bankhead
Theater, Google senior staff engineer Mike Montemerlo played a video compilation. A
windshield-mounted camera showed faultless journeys: through dark mountain roads filled
with big rigs and leaping deer; a residential, stroller-infested Mountain View neighborhood; a
FasTrak toll booth; and highway construction sites. And what Bay Area driving test would be
complete without a meander down pedestrian-rich Lombard Street? Throughout 10
challenging routes and 1,000 miles, the self-driving phenomenon performed like a
robotic Galileo. Originally composed of a tiny fleet of toaster-topped Priuses and one Audi
TT, the program now boasts a dozen Lexus SUVs sporting Silicon Valley tech
company Velodyne's Light Detection and Ranging system (LIDAR). Spinning at up to
900 rpm, the 64-laser rooftop whirligig creates a 360-degree point cloud an enhanced
"driver's" view. Other than the vehicles' high-tech hats, Google's autonomous cars hide their
hardware: algorithm-loaded computers in the trunk, radar under the front hood, Vestigial
Actuators where they always are (VAs are code for brake, accelerator, steering wheel). In the
car's interior, the only aberrant features are a passenger with a data-collecting laptop and a
Big Red Button (known as the BRB) a clown-sized, electronics interruption knob to punch
in a crisis. (Self-driving car language is rife with acronyms, applied to everything from
roadkill to potholes to the car's sensitive circuitry.) Beyond the geeky fascination, Google's
program wields enough clout to earn commentary from transportation experts all
over the Bay Area. At a sustainable transportation conference sponsored by Chevron in
Concord in late January, Oakland-based Cambridge Systematics partner and ITS-Midwest
Vice President Christopher Hedden said the interesting part isn't the technology, it's how we
will live in the smart-car future. "Google's goal is to reduce the number of cars on the road.
This will impact where you choose to live," he said. "Imagine an autonomous Winnebago.
Get in after work at 7 p.m. and say, 'Take me to L.A.'" Turning to more serious matters,
Hedden said connected vehicles and self-driving cars will greatly reduce drunken driverrelated accidents. Self-driving cars trace their origin to a Defense Advanced Research Project
Agency invention, the DARPA Grand Challenge. Frustrated in its efforts to develop self-operating
vehicles, the Department of Defense in 2004 dangled a $1 million prize (subsequently $2 million)
for inventing a car capable of traveling 132 miles in the desert without a driver or remote control.
The first year's winner managed to cover only 7.5 miles. But bright minds at places like Carnegie
Mellon University and Stanford were turned on. In 2005, the second year, Montemerlo's Stanford
team completed the course and won with "Stanley," a VW Touareg stuffed with computers. After
2007, DARPA's focus turned to robotics; the corporate world had taken the self-driving car
challenge and run with it. Safety, Montemerlo says, is the No. 1 reason "you need this car in
your driveway." With 32,778 auto-related fatalities in 2010 1.5 million worldwide, on
average, per year he said, "anything we can do to make driving safer can potentially save
thousands of lives." Smart cars save lives, he argues, by reducing human error. An
autonomous vehicle doesn't get mad, drink and drive, fall asleep, text illegally, become
legally blind or too old to drive responsibly but remain too independent to stop or
practice playing trombone. Montemerlo showed actual photographic evidence of a driver
practicing his instrument, earning a big laugh, but statistics from the American Automobile
Association prove the sobering truth: Ninety-three percent of the 6 million annual
crashes are attributable to human erro r. Improved safety and economics also come from
autonomous driving's efficiency. Total lane capacity on a freeway is estimated by experts to
be 2,000 vehicles per hour. At peak capacity, only 15 percent of the space is used, according
to Montemerlo. But that would change if sensors were allowed to command a car and
decrease the "cushion" needed to drive safely. "If we could use more of the space, we
could double the capacity of the road," Montemerlo said. Instead of adding lanes to
handle congestion (costly construction), smart cars could operate more cars on
existing roads, leaving more funds for road maintenance. Plus, greater efficiency
would reduce the amount of time (and fuel) people burn up on the road: 30 billion
hours per year, studies show.
Revenue Internal Link

Advertising revenue is a driving factor for internet companies
profits, especially Google.
Investopedia 15 Investopedia is a popular financial website that includes a
wide variety of financial voices, 2015 ("How important is advertising revenue in the
Internet sector?," Early 2015, Available Online at
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041015/how-important-advertisingrevenue-internet-sector.asp, Accessed 7-21-2015)//CM
Advertising revenue is extremely important to the Internet sector , though reliance on
advertising revenue varies among industry participants. Certain Internet firms such as Amazon, eBay and
Priceline operate online marketplaces and derive revenue from premium postings and
commissions from sales on their respective platforms , reducing the importance of
advertisements. Companies such as Salesforce generate revenue by charging users for services. This model is
becoming increasingly popular as software-as-a-service providers proliferate, especially for enterprise solutions.
Media companies such as Netflix or the Wall Street Journal can charge users for subscription memberships because
they offer unique, high-quality content. E-commerce retailers generate income through retail sales in the same
Advertising generates the vast majority of

revenue in the search and social media portions of the Internet industry. Google,
Yahoo and Baidu all rely heavily on income from advertising. According to Search Engine
Watch, 47% to 64% of total website traffic comes through search engines . This allows
search providers to charge vendors for display ad placement or sponsored search
results. Popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have become common mediums for
manner as traditional brick and mortar retailers.
communication and entertainment, resulting in heavy traffic and access to substantial user data. User volume and
targeted advertising are attractive to businesses that are trying attract customers, and social networks have
consider the 2014 annual filings for

the largest Internet firms. According to Pricewaterhouse Cooper, the ten largest U.S.
companies in terms of digital ad revenues control 71% of the market, and the next 15
companies hold an additional 11% market share. The largest companies provide an excellent
gauge of overall industry conditions. For the online marketplace operators Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and
exploited this advantage substantially. To illustrate these points,
Priceline, advertising revenues contributed 7%, 16%, 1.6% and 5% respectively. These advertising contributions
also include revenue from marketing solutions and other services, meaning that the actual ad revenues are even
lower than the available figures. Salesforce derives substantial income from subscription fees and support services,
and advertising income is not even mentioned in its 2014 10-K. Netflix similarly generates substantial revenues
Advertising contributed 90%

of Google's total revenue, 79% of Yahoo's total revenue and 99% of Baidu's total
revenue. Digital advertising accounted for 92% and 90% of Facebook's and Twitter's
total revenues, respectively. The importance of advertising revenue will continue to
grow as technology advances. According to a 2014 report by Pricewaterhouse Cooper , U.S. online
advertising revenues grew 15.1% year over year to $23.1 billion in the first half of
2014. During this same period, mobile ad spending grew 76%. As mobile devices
become ubiquitous, local, real-time and precisely targeted advertising will become
increasingly valuable for businesses.
from membership fees, and it does not publish figures related to ad sales.
Advertising makes up the majority of googles revenue

Bott 14, (Ed, an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades'
experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He has
served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC
World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during
his tenure, Apple, Google, Microsoft: Where does the money come from?, Zdnet,
2/6/2014, http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-google-microsoft-where-does-themoney-come-from/)
Google was a one-trick pony, with its revenues coming almost
entirely from advertising. According to its 2011 annual report,
"Advertising revenues made up 97 percent of our revenues in 2009 and 96
percent of our revenues in 2010 and 2011." That picture changed slightly with Google's
attempt to move into hardware manufacturing via its acquisition of Motorola
Mobility, as you can see in this chart. But the pending sale of Motorola Mobility to
Lenovo will shift things back to nearly the way they were. The "Other"
category, which includes digital content and non-Motorola hardware products, is still a tiny fraction
of the company's revenues. After the Lenovo transaction closes, Google's advertising
revenues will go back to being more than 90 percent of its total.
GOOGLE Two years ago,
PRISM Link
Googles intelligence will reduce if PRISM is curtailed
,Available online at http://thedailyjournalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rjaprivacy-v-spying.pdf, Accessed online at 07-14-15
A further set of examples
comes from studying dependability in network industries, from the power industry
to the ISPs and other firms that provide the Internet itself [4]. Here again there are other
However they do help explain many effects beyond mere information security.
externalities; for example, a utility that suffers an outage faces the cost of lost customer minutes, while the social
costs are very much greater. But in many utilities, network effects play a role in industry dynamics, along with
technical lock-in and marginal costs. Curiously, scholars of government appear to have paid little attention to these
factors. Experts in public choice study how people act within institutions, while the international relations
community observes the interaction between them. The latter school is divided between realists (Thucydides,
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kissinger ) who see relations between states as a cynical zero-sum game, and liberals who
believe in international institutions, global norms and interdependence (Kant, Wilson, Keohane, Clinton ) but
even the liberals pay little or no attention to network effects. There is some specialist literature on whether
governments should interfere in markets with network effects, or with behaviours that have a social-network
component such as smoking and obesity, but this tends to focus on the likely effectiveness of intervention; its
takeaway message is the pessimistic one that regulating networked industries is hard, and behaviours with
international
surveillance network whose scale surprised even industry insiders and security
experts. In order to understand how this might be brought under appropriate political, judicial and social control,
we need to understand its dynamics. Of course these depend hugely on the economics of the
communications service industries; its was the existence of large service firms like
Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft which control the personal information of
many millions of people that enabled the intelligence agencies to gain cheap and
convenient access via PRISM, while the relatively small number of international
cable operators facilitates TEMPORA. But that is not all.
entrenched social-network support can be hard to change. The Snowden papers reveal an
2NC/1NR Impacts
Innovation Module
Google has significant influence on the world a loss of
revenue would preclude future innovations that can change
the shape of our future
McFarland 14 Matt McFarland is is the editor of Innovations at the Washington
Post, 1-14-2014 ("7 reasons why Google is the most fascinating company in the
world," Washington Post, 1-14-2014, Available Online at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/01/14/7-reasons-whygoogle-is-the-most-fascinating-company-in-the-world/, Accessed 7-21-2015)//CM
Just Google it. The word is synonymous with searching the Web. But given the
sweeping goals of the company, the word Google might come to mean something
else in pop culture. Google made a big move Monday, announcing plans to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion.
With Nest on board Google continues to position itself to change the world on a grand scale. Here are seven reasons
Googles future will be incredibly interesting : Tony Fadell has a proven track record. What will
They now have a key player behind the iPod and
iPhone on their side. Before he was CEO of Nest, Tony Fadell led the Apple team that
developed the iPod. Hes sometimes called the Podfather and had a hand in the iPhone as well. This is
huge for Google, a company that has lacked a hip, aesthetic touch. Google Glass
looks like something for cyborgs. Apple has long had talent for making beautiful objects that can win
why
he do next? (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP) 1.
mainstream acceptance. Take one look at the Nest Thermostat or Nest Protect and youll be struck by its looks. With
at least 100 former Apple employees now joining Google, a lack of elite design instincts is addressed. Meet the Nest
Google has its hottest

products. Not long ago, a phone was something you simply placed calls on. Now, a smartphone can be used as
Thermostat. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) 2. The Internet of Things is exploding, and
flashlight, alarm clock, pocketwatch, calculator, GPS, camera and more. The gadgets smartphones dont kill off will
Were realizing the potential of the

Internet of Things, in which everyday objects harness the power of digital chips and
Internet access. Nests two products a thermostat and smoke detector have
received near universal praise. Fadells team has a secret sauce and an advantage over everyone else in
this space. Whatever unloved household device they seek to reinvent next will likely be
a hit. Driving may be fun, but it isnt healthy. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg) 3. The self-driving car may be
the most important innovation of the 21st century. Motorized vehicles kill 1.24
million people per year worldwide. That number is on pace to triple to 3.6 million by 2030. Selfdriving cars offer a solution. Who happens to be a key player in this space? Google.
4. Theyre hoarding robots for who knows what. Google bought eight robotics companies in 2013
to pursue what it admits is a moonshot. One of those companies won the DARPA robotics
challenge in December, which suggests that Google has a leg up on competitors. Its been reported that
its early robotics efforts will focus on electronics assembly and manufacturing . Instead
of limiting itself to its core business of Web search, Google has expanded its tentacles into
whatever it finds interesting or potentially world changing. It even bought a
company that makes airborne wind turbines. A Google Fiber technician gets supplies out of his
truck to install Google Fiber in a residential home in Provo, Utah. (George Frey/Reuters) 5. Google is quietly
building a telecom network. Google controls more than 100,000 miles of fiber-optic
cables around the world, according to the Wall Street Journal. For comparisons sake, thats more
than twice the size of Sprints network. Theyre experimenting with Google Fiber,
which brings uncommonly fast Internet to a nation that is lagging behind the world
in Internet speeds. While Google Fibers current reach is limited, its existence is a reminder to consumers and
be reinvented too with computer chips and online access.
rival Internet providers that better service can and should exist. If the country that invented the Internet is going to
lead the world in Internet speeds, Google Fiber will nudge us forward. 6. Theyd like to cheat death . Youve
heard the expression nothing is certain but death and taxes. But it may not even be a certainty if Google has its
way. Its funding Calico, which will tackle aging and related diseases. 7. Google doesnt care
for convention or precedent. Companies, individuals and armies falter when they expect the future to resemble the
past. Because the past is all we know, imagining the future is a challenge. We look at the present through a rearview mirror. We march backwards into the future, media theorist Marshall McLuhan once wrote. Google doesnt
Dont be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or

speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses, Google CEO Larry
Page wrote in September. Hes open to radical and different thinking. His idea as a
have this problem.
Stanford grad student of downloading the entire Web onto a computer may have seemed crazy, but it was the
foundation of Google. As Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer once put it, Larrys
superpower is asking Why
not? Why does it have to be this way ? Pages outlook is the perfect fit for leading a company in an
era of revolutionary technology. Google says its mission is to organize the worlds
information and make it universally accessible and useful. With these new ventures
a more accurate and appropriately shorter slogan might be reorganizing the
world. Eventually our planet will see a company with a market cap of $1 trillion. If
Google can put all the pieces together and keep innovating, they have a good
chance. Whether they succeed or not, the road ahead will be exciting.
Innovations in business are key to competition in the future.

Macfarland 13 Scott Macfarland is a Digital marketer and brand strategist,
2013 ("Why Is Innovation Management So Important to Compete?," Huffington Post,
10-30-2013, Available Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scottmacfarland/why-innovation-management-is-important_b_4174482.html, Accessed 721-2015)//CM
innovation management is really just a form of looking into the future, being
creative and imaginative so that you can carve out a new niche before your
competitors. Business must look ahead, not behind. It's not just the big companies that need to
In reality,
do this. Every business must innovate to compete. They must create new products and services for new markets.
They must be creative, and come up with new ideas that never would have been
thought of before. This is the new management paradigm. Get used to it, it's not going away
anytime soon. Here's what will happen. Everything will speed up. Processes, functions, data, inventory turns and
speed to market, will force employees to learn a whole new language called innovation.
Business as usual
doesn't cut it any more. Enter innovation management.
The proven management tools,

techniques and clichs once embraced, are being challenged and shelved for a new set of rules and a new way of
The management style of the future is no longer command and control.

That ship has sailed. Today, in order for businesses to succeed, management must
trust in the technologies and open leadership styles that are sweeping boardrooms,
the C-suite, office suites and cubicles everywhere. In fact, today's companies are implementing
doing business.
new job titles that are rapidly appearing on business cards and office doors. So, which one will you hire next? Chief
Innovation Officer, Chief Ideation Officer or Chief Digital Officer? Ten years ago, you would have been laughed out of
the building if these were printed on your business card. Not today. According to Idris Mootee who wrote the book
Innovation Management is about more than just

planning new products, services, brand extensions, or technology inventions. It's
about imagining, mobilizing, and competing in new ways. I couldn't agree more. This may
Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation,
sound like it's just another day in the office, however, it's clear that imagining new ideas and competing in new
ways is extremely challenging, even for the biggest and best of companies. So, how do companies forge ahead so
they can be change agents for the next generation? I believe one way is to immerse themselves in the benefits of
what the internet offers. The world as we know it has actually become smaller as a result of the convenient
connectedness of the internet. Some businesses have fully embraced the global online economy and real time,
digital, interactive communication we now have at our fingertips, all of which didn't exist that long ago.
Consequently, a massive paradigm shift in how business is conducted has paved

the way for an environment that desires more and demands more. In the online
environment, everyone communicates more, and in more ways, shares more information, creates more content,
trashes more, stores more, and buys more of just about everything a human or business could possibly want.
People and businesses also have more friends in their contact list. Based on the trends, we are addicted to more,
Expectations are now rising at alarming rates,

and the speed of business is no longer fast enough to keep up with the speed of
innovation. Guess what? There is no end in sight. Businesses around the world are more
connected than ever before. Just ask any company how many smartphones they have, how many tablets
and it's embedded in the business environment.
and laptops they have, how many virtual meetings are held with clients, and how many emails and text messages
are sent. Oh, and we haven't even talked about the use of social technologies.
Being connected is
probably the most powerful influencer of innovation. There are many reasons for this. The
immediacy and accuracy of real-time data transfer has become the norm. We now have
the ability to share and connect with people, groups, and companies around the world. The quality and ease of use
of digital media is not just for professionals any longer. Online learning and the global reach of it have changed the
face of learning. Mobile technologies, cloud based storage, computing, medicine and space have continued to
Some form of innovation touches every aspect of

our life. In my opinion, innovation is also required to be competitive today and tomorrow.
Managing that expectation and deliverable is critical for sustainable growth to occur.
amaze us year after year. The list could go on.
In thinking about sustainable growth, I spoke with Kevin Wells, Executive Vice President, Global Market Development
for Reach Analytics. Kevin's comments were quite telling when discussing how to predict innovation for growth
How do you predict innovation, and also leverage predictive analytics so

that your business can use that information to create growth? Predicting innovation has
purposes.
always been part science, part black magic and part luck. The world of data gives us the ability to maybe leverage
the science and luck parts of that equation a little more. We are a predictive analytics firm so we have to eat our
own dog food so to speak. We look at the trends the data uncovers and then we look at the variables that are more
difficult to quantify. And then we make what we think are good business decisions. But they are based on facts more
than gut. Big data uncovers things humans would overlook -- if you know how to look for them. The future is not like
the past It's no longer the speed of business that creates challenges. It's the speed of disruption that is permeating
our business models in seemingly every possible way that is causing businesses to rethink how they operate. The
speed of disruption is also the trigger that is causing entire industries to think about how to re-purpose what they
They are realizing their current model may not be

sustainable. Welcome to the new business paradigm. Welcome to innovation
management.
have, and redefine a new sense of the brand.
Competitiveness among businesses is key to stimulate the

economy 4 warrants
Kolasky 2 William J. Kolasky, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the
Antitrust Division for the U.S. Department of Justice, 2002 (The Role Of Competition
In Promoting Dynamic Markets And Economic Growth, Address Before the
TokyoAmerica Center, November 12, Available Online at
http://www.justice.gov/atr/speech/role-competition-promoting-dynamic-marketsand-economic-growth, Accessed 7/16/15)
The most obvious benefit of competition is that it results in goods and services
being provided to consumers at competitive prices . But what people often
forget is that producers are also consumers. They must buy raw materials and
energy to produce their products, telecommunications services to communicate
with their suppliers and customers, computer equipment to keep track of their
inventories, construction services to build their plants and warehouses, and so forth.
To the extent that prices for these goods and services are higher than those of their
foreign competitors because of a lack of competition in those markets, firms will be
less competitive and will suffer in the marketplace.
A second benefit of competition is its effect on efficiency and productivity.
Companies that are faced with vigorous competition are continually
pressed to become more efficient and more productive. They know that their
competitors are constantly seeking ways to reduce costs, in order to increase profits
or gain a competitive advantage. With that constant pressure, firms know that if
they do not keep pace in making efficiency and productivity improvements, they
may well see their market position shrink, if not evaporate completely. It is exactly
this process of fierce competition between rivals that leads firms to strive to
offer higher quality goods, better services and lower prices.
A third benefit of competition is its positive effects on innovation. In today's
technology-driven world, innovation is crucial to success. Innovation leads to
new products and new production technologies. It allows new firms to enter into
markets dominated by incumbents, and is critical for incumbent firms who want to
continue their previous market successes and stimulate consumer demand for new
products. Competition drives innovation. Without competition, there would be
little pressure to introduce new products or new production methods. Without this
pressure, an economy will lag behind others as a center of innovation and will lose
international competitiveness
A fourth benefit of competition is that it fosters restructuring in sectors that
have lost competitiveness. It is difficult for governments to determine which
sectors of the economy need to be restructured, which firms in those sectors should
remain or should cease to exist, and when it is best to engage in such restructuring.
Governments are subject to political constraints and pressures, which more often
than not lead to sub-optimal decisions. The competitive process, on the other hand,
is unbiased. It forces decisions to be based on market factors, such as demand,
product uses, costs, technologies, rather than the incomplete information in the
possession of government bureaucrats. The competition for capital and other
resources by firms throughout the economy leads to money and resources flowing
away from weak, uncompetitive sectors and firms and towards the strongest, most
competitive sectors, and to the strongest and most competitive firms within those
sectors. In these ways, the very operation of the competitive process makes
decisions on restructuring clear, and leads to the strongest and most
competitive economy possible.
US economy is still the lynchpin of the global economy most

recent evidence
Brett 15 Shane Brett, author of "The Future of Hedge Funds", founder of
"Global Perspectives", co-founder of "Gecko", received his Bachelor of Business
Studies (Hons), Accounting & Finance from Dundalk Institute of Technology, received
his MBA in Management Consulting from the University of Wales, has 19 years
experience in hedge fund /asset management operations, consultancy &
technology, including programme & product management at top fund managers &
administrators worldwide, 2015 (The Global Economy In 2015 - 5 Key Trends,
Seeking Alpha, January 11, Available Online at
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2811155-the-global-economy-in-2015-5-key-trends,
Accessed 7/16/15)
The US economy created 7,000 jobs per day in 2014 and this remarkable rate of
employment growth is set to escalate in 2015.
The perceived decline of American power has been greatly exaggerated.
Commentators confuse the current US unwillingness to wield hard power, for a lack
of underlying real power. They also confuse deadlock in Washington with the
underlying dynamism of many US regions and States.
The US still controls the global economy, all the world's oceans, its trade
routes and its reserve currency. It spends nearly as much on defence as the rest
of the world put together. This will not change anytime soon.
In 2015, the US will continue to be the global engine for growth, enterprise and
innovation, as it has been for most of the last century.
This should not be surprising. The English-speakers (i.e. the USA/UK) have run the
world for 3 centuries now. They have consistently defeated all challengers to world
hegemony that have appeared over this time (Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser
Wilhelm II, Hitler, Stalin etc.).
Despite the chorus of BRIC hysteria over the last few years, the economic growth in
these countries has taken place because they adopted US policies of trade
liberalization, economic freedom and a free market. In 2015, they will endure
a major emerging market crisis. Their power will not surpass the US for decades (if
ever).
Oil Dependence Module

Google Self-Driving cars are key to revitalizing the economy,
reducing dependence on oil, and a more sustainable future.
Dallegro 14 Joseph A. Dallegro is a journalist and advertising copywriter living
in the New York area. He has covered business and finance, automobiles and local
interest stories for publications such as Institutional Investor, ConsumerSearch and
the Jersey City Independent. His advertising work has been profiled in CBS News,
The Huffington Post, and Adweek, 2014 ("How Google's Self-Driving Car Will Change
Everything, Investopedia, April 2014, Available Online at
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052014/how-googles-selfdriving-carwill-change-everything.asp, Accessed 7-21-2015)//CM
Imagine getting in your car, typing or speaking a location into your vehicles interface, then letting it drive you to
your destination while you read a book, surf the web or nap. Self-driving vehicles the stuff of science fiction since
the first roads were paved are coming, and theyre going to radically change what its like to get from point A to
point B. Basic Technology Already In Use The
building blocks of driverless cars are on the road

now, explained Russ Rader, senior v.p. of communications at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. He
pointed to the front-crash prevention systems that for several years have been able to warn drivers of an impending
obstacle and apply the brakes if they dont react fast enough. These systems were quickly followed by technology
allowing cars to self-park by sizing up a free spot and automatically steering into it, with the driver only controlling
the accelerator and brake pedals. Mercedes-Benz took autonomous driving even further with last years unveiling of
The first big leap to fully

autonomous vehicles is due in 2017, when Google Inc. (GOOG) said it would have an
integrated system ready to market. Every major automotive manufacturer is likely to follow by the
a steering system that works on the highway, in certain circumstances.
early 2020s, though their systems could wind up being more sensor-based, and rely less on networking and access
to map information. Google probably wont manufacture cars. More likely, itll license the software and systems. A
Drastic Change As with the adoption of any new revolutionary technology, there will be problems for businesses
that dont adjust fast enough. Futurists estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions) will be lost by
automakers, suppliers, dealers, insurers, parking companies, and many other car-related enterprises. And think of
the lost revenue for governments via licensing fees, taxes and tolls, and by personal injury lawyers and health
insurers. Who needs a car made with heavier-gauge steel and eight airbags (not to mention a body shop) if
accidents are so rare? Who needs a parking spot close to work if your car can drive you there, park itself miles
away, only to pick you up later? Who needs to buy a flight from Boston to Cleveland when you can leave in the
Googles goal is to increase car

utilization from 5-10% to 75% or more by facilitating sharing. That means fewer cars
on the road. Fewer cars period, in fact. Who needs to own a car when you can just order a
shared one and itll drive up minutes later, ready to take you wherever you want?
This [has the potential to] dramatically reduce the number of cars on the street,
80% of which have people driving alone in them, and also a household's cost of
transportation, which is 18% of their income around $9,000 a year for an asset
that they use only 5% of the time, said Robin Chase, the founder and CEO of Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer
car sharing service, and co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar. In 2030, self-driving cars are expected to
create $87 billion worth of opportunities for automakers and technology developers ,
evening, sleep much of the way, and arrive in the morning? Indeed,
said a report by Boston-based Lux Research. Software developers stand to win big. A Car Manufacturing Revolution
If youre an automaker, such as Ford Motor Co. (F), General Motors Co. (GM), Chrysler Group LLC, Toyota Motor Corp.
or Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC), which account for about 70% of the U.S. market, you could see an initial surge in
the $600 billion in annual new and used car sales in the U.S. But as soon as the technology takes hold, sales could
fall off significantly as sharing popularizes. Cars will always need steel, glass, an interior, a drivetrain and some
form of human interface (even if that interface is little more than a wireless connection to your smartphone). But
much of everything else could change. As an example, take front-facing seats; they could become an option, not a
requirement. Automakers that see change coming, such as how the big profits are secured downstream by car
servicers, insurers and more, are focusing on services as much as on what and how they manufacture.
Infrastructure Transformation
With fewer cars around, parking lots and spaces that cover
roughly a one-third of the land area of many U.S. cities can be repurposed. That
could mean temporary downward pressure on real estate values as supply
increases. It could also mean greener urban areas, as well as revitalized suburbs, as
longer commutes become more palatable. And if fewer cars are on the road, the
federal and state governments may be able to reallocate a good portion of the
roughly $30 billion spent annually on highways. Changing Oil Demand If youre in the business of
finding, extracting, refining and marketing hydrocarbons, such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (EOX), Chevron Corp. (CVX) or
These vehicles should practice

very efficient eco-driving practices, which is typically about 20% better than the
average driver, said Chase On the other hand, if these cars are owned by individuals, I see a huge rise in
BP plc (BP), you could see your business fluctuate as use changes.
the number of trips, and vehicle miles traveled. People will send out their car to run errands they would never do if
If the autonomous cars are shared vehicles

and people pay for each trip, I think this will reduce demand, and thus (vehicle miles
traveled). Safety Dividend Autonomous vehicles are also expected to be safer. These
cars won't get drunk or high, drive too fast, or take unnecessary risks things
people do all the time, Chase said. Over 90% of accidents today are caused by
driver error, said Professor Robert W. Peterson of the Center for Insurance Law and Regulation at Santa Clara
University School of Law. There is every reason to believe that self-driving cars will reduce
frequency and severity of accidents, so insurance costs should fall, perhaps
dramatically. Cars can still get flooded, damaged or stolen, notes Michael Barry, the v.p. of media relations
they had to be in the car and waste their own time.
at the Insurance Information Institute. But this technology will have a dramatic impact on underwriting. A lot of
traditional underwriting criteria will be upended. Barry said its too early to quantify exactly how self-driving
vehicles will affect rates, but added that injured parties in a crash involving a self-driving car may choose to sue the
vehicles manufacturer, or the software company that designed the autonomous capability. Initially, insurers such as
State Farm Insurance, Allstate Corp. (ALL), Liberty Mutual Group, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.s (BRK-A) GEICO,
Citigroup Inc.s (C) Travelers Group could see a huge benefit from lower accident liabilities, but wind up losing a big
portion of the $200 billion in personal auto premiums they write every year as fewer cars take to the road. Some
have even speculated that mandatory insurance for cars could be dropped. And as long as were talking about
financial services, what of the multitude of banks and creditors that lend buyers money in about 70% of car
if only 10% of the cars on U.S.

roads were autonomous, more than $37 billion of savings could be realized via less
wasted time and fuel, as well as fewer injuries and deaths. At 90%, the benefit rises
to almost $450 billion a year. Closer to Home Self-driving cars could have a substantial impact on the
purchases if sales volume falls? According to a University of Texas report,
taxi and limousine industries and could create new ones. Chase noted that they could be used to share specific trips
as a kind of pay-as-you-go small-scale public transportation taking a disparate bunch of Manhattanites to the
that a fleet of 9,000 driverless taxis could

serve all of Manhattan at about 40 cents per mile (compared to about $4-6 per mile
now). There are licenses for over 13,000 taxis in the Big Apple now. Self-driving cars may also challenge train
beach in the Hamptons, for instance. One study found
lines. A self-driving car offers much of the convenience of rail service with the added convenience that the service
is portal-to-portal rather than station-to-station, Peterson said. On the other hand, a fleet of self-driving cars
available at the station may make rail service more palatable. The technology has already been adopted in closed
systems, such as campuses, air-terminals and mining, he noted. Rio Tinto Group (RIO), a large mining company,
uses enormous self-driving trucks in its mining operations. European countries are experimenting with the
platooning of trucks. Among other things, this saves about 18% in fuel. Risks, Hurdles and the Unknown There are
regulatory and legislative obstacles to widespread use of self-driving cars, and substantial concerns about privacy
(who will have access to any driving information these vehicles store?). Theres also the question of security, as
hackers could theoretically take control of these vehicles, and are not known for their restraint or civic-mindedness.
However it plays out, these vehicles are coming and fast. Their full adoption
will take decades, but their convenience, cost, safety and other factors will make them
ubiquitous and indispensable. Such as with any technological revolution, the companies that plan ahead,
The Bottom Line
adjust the fastest and imagine the biggest will survive and thrive. And companies invested in old technology and
practices will need to evolve or risk dying.
Driverless cars have the potential to substantially cut oil

dependence and make traveling more efficient.
Plumer 13 Brad Plumer is a reporter focusing on energy and environmental
issues at The Washington Post. He was previously an associate editor at The New
Republic, 2013 ("Will driverless cars solve our energy problems or just create new
ones?," Washington Post, 3-30-2013, Available Online at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/30/will-self-drivingcars-solve-all-our-energy-problems-or-create-new-ones/, Accessed 7-22-2015)//CM
Self-driving cars are all the rage these days. Companies like Google are building vehicles that can drive themselves with sensors and
algorithms. Futurists are raving about how this will revolutionize transportation: fewer accidents, easier parking... It's reached the
point where even Newt Gingrich is offering a "short course" on driverless cars. Wait a minute, who's driving this thing? (Getty
Images) And that got us wondering.
If self-driving cars ever do become the future of

transportation, what would that mean for energy, oil use and climate change in the
decades ahead? Some backdrop: Last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a big
report on how the United States could cut gasoline use and transport emissions 80
percent by 2050 a key step toward addressing global warming and U.S. oil
dependency. It would be difficult, the report said, but a big push on electric vehicles, advanced
biofuels and efficiency could get us there. In a follow-up post, David Roberts criticized the NAS for thinking
too prosaically. The report assumed our transportation system would look basically the same in 2050, only with somewhat cleaner
What if self-driving cars become ubiquitous and utterly

transform the way we get around? The task of getting off oil and curbing emissions
could be much easier or much harder than anyone thinks. Now, a future filled with driverless cars might be farvehicles. And that might well be wrong.
fetched, but it's interesting to ponder. So here are a few very speculative thoughts on how self-driving cars could conceivably affect
energy use in the decades ahead assuming they ever catch on: How driverless cars could curb energy use and be great for the
Driverless cars will be far more fuel-efficient. That's the idea, anyway, laid out in this report
from KPMG. Once we no longer need clumsy human drivers, then self-driving cars and
trucks will be able to bunch close together at steadier spe eds. Traffic jams and accidents will
become a thing of the past. The robots will be driving as efficiently as possible. The hope is that this
environment:
could save thousands of lives. It could also have massive effects on energy use. The Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that the
reduction in wind drag alone from vehicles traveling closely together could reduce fuel use 20 percent to 30 percent: 012513-
Driverless vehicles could also, in theory be much, much

lighter since collisions will no longer be a big concern. Cars that currently weigh 4,000 pounds could
one day weigh just 750 pounds. That development alone there would nearly double
energy efficiency. Driverless cars will waste less fuel on things like looking for
parking. One MIT study found that in congested urban areas, about 40 percent of
total gasoline use in cars is spent as drivers look for parking. Presumably, intelligent self-driving
cars wouldn't have this problem. Driverless cars will make car-sharing more popular, which will
mean fewer vehicles on the road . Lots of self-driving-car enthusiasts have argued that car-sharing will be a
DriverlessCars2-image2-courtesyPATH
popular model after all, most privately owned cars are currently parked and idle 90 percent of the time. Wouldn't it make more
Driverless
cars will make the transition to electric vehicles easier. Lighter, more efficient cars
will be able to go much farther on a single battery charge, which means that "range
anxiety" will be less of an issue for plug-ins. Driverless cars will increase the appeal
of walking and biking. Since self-driving cars will (in theory) be much, much safer than human drivers, it'll be less
dangerous to bike on the road. At the margins, that could be a boon to pedestrians. Cities will become
more appealing. If traffic gets less crazy, if walking and biking become more
attractive, and if parking is no longer a huge hassle, denser urban living might
become more attractive. Since cities tend to be more energy-efficient than the
suburbs, that could reduce energy use. (Although see below for a counterpoint.) The flip side: How driverless
sense for the self-driving car to make itself useful during that period? Car-sharing could mean fewer cars overall.
cars could lead to a huge surge in energy demand. More and more people will drive. Think about all the people who are not allowed
to drive right now. Everyone under 16. The elderly. The disabled. People who are intoxicated or on medication. People who are
sleeping. That's a huge portion of the population. And all of those people will be able to ride in driverless cars. And that means we
could see many more car trips. That's a huge plus for mobility. But it also has big energy implications. At the moment, vehicle milestraveled in the United States appears to have peaked back in 2005 in part because fewer and fewer young people are getting
their licenses and driving. Could self-driving cars reverse that trend? Doug-Short-chart-VMT Public transportation could lose its
appeal. If driverless cars or driverless taxis catch on, then trains and buses could find themselves displaced. You can read or zone
out in a driverless car just as easily as you can on the subway. Depending on how this all shakes out, it could mean more driving and
higher energy demands. Urban sprawl could greatly expand. Arielle Duhaime-Ross has a good post on this. Right now, there's a
serious limit to how sprawled-out a city can get people tend to prefer to keep their commutes under an hour. But if driverless cars
can offer quick, efficient transportation, then we could see more people spread out to the suburbs. It's possible this could mean
bigger environmental effects. (That said, it would be a big gain for public health if commuting became less stressful and arduous.)
Cars might need to be replaced more frequently. If car-sharing became widespread, then driverless cars would be on the road and in
motion far more often. This might mean cars would have a lifespan similar to that of police vehicles, about three to five years, rather
than their current 11 years. It's hard to say what this would mean for energy use cars could be upgraded more quickly as new
technology became available but it's another angle here. No doubt there are a million other possibilities I haven't thought of or
missed, so feel free to add more in comments.
Self-driving cars have serious implications for the future of the

environment
Elkind 12 Ethan Elkind is the Associate Director of the Climate Change and
Business Program at UC Berkeley, 4-10-2012 ("Could Self-Driving Cars Help The
Environment?," No Publication, 4-10-2012, Available Online at http://legalplanet.org/2012/04/10/could-self-driving-cars-help-the-environment/, Accessed 7-222015)//CM
futurists have been
imagining a world where autonomous vehicles rule the roadway. Using computer
programs, map data, complex sensors, and soon the ability to see all vehicles
within miles, these cars hold the promise of averting the vast majority of car
accidents caused by human error, while passengers in the drivers seat can nap,
work, and do anything but concentrate on driving. The future is here to some extent: self-parking
As companies like Google pioneer technologies to allow cars to drive themselves,
technologies are already in use with more coming soon, and Googles autonomous car program has made internet
waves (video here), sparking enabling legislation in Nevada and a bill in California. In another few decades, we may
have a driving revolution on our hands (and the idea of dying in a car accident may seem as foreign to our
what could this technology mean for the

environment? We know that cars are responsible for significant greenhouse gas
emissions and toxic air pollution. Self-driving vehicles hold the potential to reduce
these emissions by driving more efficiently, including the possibility of not having to
stop at intersections or even red lights as cars seamlessly avoid each other. Vehicles
grandchildren as dying of small pox). But
may also be able to tailgate like train cars, adding more capacity and enabling efficient speeds for existing roads
and highways. Cars may also become extremely lightweight and fuel efficient, as consumers no longer need heavy
cars to survive collisions. But as the video below suggests, overall vehicle miles traveled may increase as driving
becomes possible for those currently unable to drive, such as the elderly, the physically disabled or impaired, and of
course the inebriated. Self-driving vehicles may also outcompete public transit for those who can afford to drive, as
their cars would provide the same benefits as transit (such as the ability to work while commuting) without the
hassles. In addition, self-driving vehicles may clog the road as households share vehicles that drive themselves
around to pick up multiple people, such as spouses driving the same car to work at different times. At this point,
proponents of self-driving cars are more interested in issues like insurance liability than environmental law. And the
as the cars become more common,

policy makers and clean air advocates could benefit from studying the impacts of
these cars to see how they might mitigate our pressing air pollution problems.
technology still requires more research and development. But
Oil independence is key to a sustainable economy

Anderson 14 Richard Anderson is a business Reporter for BBC News, 2014
("How American energy independence could change the world," BBC News, 4-12014, Available Online at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-23151813, Accessed
7-22-2015)//CM
being largely self-sufficient in
energy could have widespread implications not just for the US, but for the rest of
the world. US economy Last year, the United States spent about $300bn (180bn) on
importing oil. This represented almost two-thirds of the country's entire annual
trade deficit. Oil imports are, therefore, sucking hundreds of billions of dollars a year
out of the US economy. As the IEA says, a persistent trade deficit can act as a drag on
economic growth, manufacturing and employment . If the US achieved energy
independence, not only would the country spend far less on cheaper, domestically
generated power, but the money would be going primarily to US-owned energy
producers. The US's oil import bill also constitutes about 2% of the country's annual
economic growth. As the US economy averages about 2% growth a year, the
country would, in effect, be getting a year's growth for free. Paul Dales, at Capital Economics,
No-one is suggesting America will stop importing power overnight, but
argues that as this would be spread out over the next 10-20 years, the annual benefits would be much smaller - in
this instance, 0.2%-0.1%. True, but comparing now with energy independence,
the boost to the US
economy of ending oil imports would be significant.
Oil dependence diminishes US hegemony key to combating

WMD spread, terrorism, Gulf instability
Deutch and Schlesinger 6 John Deutch, served as Deputy Secretary of
Defense, Director of Central Intelligence, Director of Energy Research, Acting
Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology, and Undersecretary of the Department,
emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a
B.A. in history and economics from Amherst College, and both the B.S. in chemical
engineering and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from M.I.T, and James R. Schlesinger,
served as Secretary of Defense under Nixon and Ford, America's first Secretary of
Energy, Director of Central Intelligence, earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in economics
from the Horace Mann School and Harvard University, 2006 (National Security
Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, Report of an Independent Task Force,
Available Online at
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Chapter_2006_National
%20Security%20Consequences_CFR.pdf, Accessed 7/22/15)
The Task Force has identified five major reasons why dependence on energy traded
in world markets is a matter of concern for U.S. foreign policy. We have also examined a
sixth, the relationship of military force structure to oil dependence.
control over enormous oil revenues gives exporting countries the flexibility to
adopt policies that oppose U.S. interests and values . Iran proceeds with a program that appears
to be headed toward acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. Russia is able to ignore Western
First, the
attitudes as it has moved to authoritarian policies in part because huge revenues

from oil and gas exports are available to finance that style of government . Venezuela
has the resources from its oil exports to invite realignment in Latin American political relationships and to fund
changes such as Argentinas exit from its International Monetary Fund (IMF) standby agreement and Bolivias recent
Because of their oil wealth, these and other

producer countries are free to ignore U.S. policies and to pursue interests inimical to
our national security.
decision to nationalize its oil and gas resources.
oil dependence causes political realignments that constrain the ability of the
United States to form partnerships to achieve common objectives. Perhaps the most
pervasive effect arises as countries dependent on imports subtly modify their
policies to be more congenial to suppliers. For example, China is aligning its relationships in
Second,
the Middle East (e.g., Iran and Saudi Arabia) and Africa (e.g., Nigeria and Sudan) because of its desire to secure oil
the European Union, are more reluctant to

confront difficult issues with Russia and Iran because of their dependence on
imported oil and gas as well as the desire to pursue business opportunities in those
countries.
supplies. France and Germany, and with them much of
These new realignments have further diminished U.S. leverage , particularly in

the Middle East and Central Asia. For example, Chinese interest in securing oil and gas supplies
challenges U.S. influence in central Asia, notably in Kazakhstan. And Russias influence is likely to grow as it exports
oil and (within perhaps a decade) large amounts of natural gas to Japan and China.
All consuming countries, including the United States, are more constrained in
dealing with producing states when oil markets are tight. To cite one current example,
concern about losing Irans 2.5 million barrels per day of world oil exports will cause
importing states to be reluctant to take action against Irans nuclear program.
high prices and seemingly scarce supplies create fears especially evident in
Beijing and New Delhi, as well as in European capitals and in Washington that the current system of
open markets is unable to ensure secure supply. The present competition has resulted in oil
and gas deals that include political arrangements in addition to commercial
terms. Highly publicized Chinese oil investments in Africa have included funding for infrastructure projects such
Third,
as an airport, a railroad, and a telecommunications system, in addition to the agreement that the oil be shipped to
China. Many more of these investments also include equity stakes for state-controlled Chinese companies. Another
example is Chinese firms taking a position in Saudi Arabia, along with several Western firms, in developing Saudi
Arabias gas infrastructure.
At present, these arrangements have little effect on world oil and gas markets because the volumes affected are
such arrangements are spreading. These arrangements are worrisome because

they lead to special political relationships that pose difficulties for the United States.
And they allow importers to believe that they obtain security through links to
particular suppliers rather than from the proper functioning of a global market.
small. However,
the United States, in the past, has also taken decisions to restrict markets
partly due to similar concerns about energy security . For example, when the trans-Alaska
pipeline opened, it included a prohibition against exporting the oil. The hostility toward proposals by the
Chinese National Overseas Oil Company (CNOOC) to purchase Union Oil of California is seen by some as
denying investment opportunity in the U.S. market in a similar manner to what the
United States decries about other nations conduct . The Task Force believes that foreign entities
We note that
should be able to purchase U.S. assets provided that the acquisitions meet the criteria established by the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).12
Opening a dialogue with rapidly growing consumers, notably China and India, can help those consumers gain
confidence that will lead to a greater willingness to allow markets to operate. (We return to this policy
recommendation later.) The United States and other consuming countries have a tremendous interest in
maintaining the present open market oil commodity trading rules.
Fourth, revenues from oil and gas exports can undermine local governance . The United
States has an interest in promoting good governance both for its own sake and because it encourages investment
States that are politically unstable and poorly

governed often struggle with the task of responsibly managing the large revenues
that come from their oil and gas exports . The elements of good governance include democratic
that can increase the level and security of supply.
accountability, low corruption, and fiscal transparency. Production in fragile democracies, such as in Nigeria, can be
undermined when politicians or local warlords focus on ways to seize oil and gas rents rather than on the longer-
Totalitarian governments that have control over those

revenue flows can entrench their rule.
term task of governance.
When markets are tight, large oil consumers have tended to become especially focused on securing supply and
ignore the effects of their investments on corruption and mismanagement. In Sudan, for example, despite civil war
and widespread human rights abuses, the Chinese government and its oil enterprises are funding extensive oil
supply and 12 Alan P. Larson and David M. Marchick, Foreign Investment and National Security: Getting the Balance
Right, a Council Special Report(New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2006). Findings: How Dependence on
Imported Energy Affects U.S. Foreign Policy 29 infrastructure projects. China has used its threat of a veto in the UN
Security Council to thwart collective efforts by other countries to manage the Darfur crisis in Sudan. Similarly,
China, India, and several Western European countries continue to invest in Iran despite the need to contain its
nuclear aspirations.
a significant interruption in oil supply will have adverse political and

economic consequences in the United States and in other importing
countries. When such a disruption occurs, it upends all ongoing policy activity in a frantic
effort to return to normal conditions. Inevitably, those efforts include matters of foreign
policy, such as coordination with other countries to find measures that will mitigate
the consequences of the supply disruption. Some of these responses may be preplanned, such as
the coordinated release of strategic reserves, but other responses will be hurried, ineffectual,
or even counterproductive.
Fifth,
Sixth, some observers see a direct relationship between the dependence of the United States on oil, especially from
if it
were not dependent on this oil, the United States and its allies would have
no interest in the region, and hence it would be possible to achieve
significant reductions in the U.S. military posture. In the extreme, this argument says
that if the nation reduced its dependence, then the defense budget could be
reduced as well.
the Persian Gulf, and the size of the U.S. defense budget. Such a relationship invites the inference that
U.S. strategic interests in reliable oil supplies from the Persian Gulf are not proportional with the percent of oil
consumption that is imported by the United States from the region. Until very low levels of dependence are
reached, the United States and all other consumers of oil will depend on the Persian Gulf. Such low levels will
certainly not be reached during the twenty-year time frame of this study.
Even if the Persian Gulf did not have the bulk of the worlds readily available oil reserves, there would be reasons to
The activities of Iran today and Iraq,

especially prior to 1991, underline the seriousness of threats from weapons of
mass destruction. Combating terrorism also requires a presence in the
Gulf. In addition to military activities, a U.S. presence in the region can help to
improve political stability.
maintain a substantial military capability in the region.
At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to U.S. interests in reliable oil supply,
nonproliferation, combating 30 National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency terrorism, and encouraging
political stability, democracy, and public welfare. Accordingly, the United States should expect and support a strong
military posture that permits suitably rapid deployment to the region, if required.
It is worthwhile to explain what should and should not be expected from this military force, and how it serves U.S.
the conventional force of the United States deters

aggression in the region. Any nation (or subnational group) that contemplates violence
on any scale must take into account the possibility of U.S. preemption,
intervention, or retaliation. Deterrence is powerful, but it does not always work (especially if the
interests. Most importantly,
possibility of a military response is not raised). For example, deterrence did not prevent the Iran-Iraq war of the
early 1980s. Because no clear and credible signal was sent of a possible response in 1990, Saddam Hussein was not
the U.S. military posture with its capacity to

intervene, if managed wisely, can play a role in stabilizing this highly fragile region and
make many countries in the region more secure from hostile action by their
neighbors.
deterred from invading Kuwait. Nevertheless,
Oil dependence entrenches existing conflicts and has a laundry

list of potential escalation scenarios
Colgan 13 Jeff D. Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Assistant Professor in the
Department of Political Science and Watson Institute for International Studies at
Brown University. His research focuses on two main areas: (1) the causes of war
and (2) global energy politics, 2013 ("Oil, Conflict, and U.S. National Interests,"
Policy Brief, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy
School, 10-21-2013, Available Online at
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23517/oil_conflict_and_us_national_i
nterests.html, Accessed 7-22-2015)//CM
the sum total of
the political effects generated by the oil industry makes oil a leading cause of war.
Between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars since 1973 have been connected
to one or more oil-related causal mechanisms. No other commodity has had such an
impact on international security. The influence of oil on conflict is often poorly understood. In U.S.
public debates about the 1991 and 2003 Iraq wars, both sides focused excessively
on the question of whether the United States was fighting for possession of oil
reserves; neither sought a broader understanding of how oil shaped the
preconditions for war. Oil fuels international conflict through eight distinct
mechanisms: (1) resource wars, in which states try to acquire oil reserves by force;
(2) petro-aggression, whereby oil insulates aggressive leaders such as Saddam Hussein or
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from domestic opposition, and therefore makes them more willing to
engage in risky foreign policy adventurism; (3) the externalization of civil wars in oilproducing states ("petrostates"); (4) financing for insurgenciesfor instance, Iran
funneling oil money to Hezbollah; (5) conflicts triggered by the prospect of oilmarket domination, such as the United States' war with Iraq over Kuwait in 1991; (6) clashes over
control of oil transit routes, such as shipping lanes and pipelines; (7) oil-related grievances,
Although the threat of "resource wars" over possession of oil reserves is often exaggerated,
whereby the presence of foreign workers in petrostates helps extremist groups such as al-Qaida recruit locals; and
(8) oil-related obstacles to multilateral cooperation, such as when an importer's

attempt to curry favor with a petrostate prevents multilateral cooperation on
security issues. These mechanisms can contribute to conflict individually or in
combination. The linkages between oil and international conflict are growing
increasingly important in light of three transitions under way in global energy

markets. The first is the shift in patterns of global oil production away from traditional suppliers in the Middle
East and toward (1) suppliers of unconventional oil reserves in North America and (2) new suppliers of conventional
oil, especially in Africa. As many as sixteen developing countries will become oil exporters in the near future,
creating a swath of new international security concerns. Second, the low oil prices of the 1990s have given way to
higher and more volatile prices, increasing the magnitude of the consequences one can expect from oil-conflict
the relative decline of U.S. hegemony may reduce the provision of public
goods such as security of shipping lanes and pipelines . Although these transitions alter some of
linkages. Third,
the ways in which the oil industry contributes to international conflict, none eliminates linkages between the two or
Understanding the
eight mechanisms linking oil to international security can help policymakers think
beyond the much-discussed goal of energy security, defined as reliable access to
affordable fuel supplies. Achieving such an understanding is important in light of
recent changes in the United States. As hydraulic fracturing"fracking"of shale oil and gas
allows the United States to disengage from global markets. THE ROLE OF FRACKING
accelerates, energy imports are projected to decline, and North America could even achieve energy independence,
in the sense of low or zero net overall energy imports, in the next decade. Yet t he
United States will

continue to import large volumes of oil, and the world price of oil will continue to
affect it. Moreover, so long as the rest of the world remains dependent on global oil markets, the fracking
revolution will do little to reduce many oil-related threats to international security. The emergence of
aggressive, revolutionary leaders in petrostates would likely continue to pose
threats to regional security. Petrostates will continue to be weakly institutionalized
and thus subject to civil wars, creating the kind of security problems that demand
responses by the international community, as occurred in Libya in 2011. Petro-financed insurgent
groups such as Hezbollah will persist, as will threats to the shipping lanes and oil transit routes that supply
important U.S. allies, such as Japan. In sum, energy autarky is not the answer. Self-sufficiency will bring economic
benefits to the United States, but few gains for national security. So long as the oil market remains globally
integrated, national oil imports matter far less than total consumption. Rather than viewing energy self-sufficiency
the United States should contribute to international security by making

long-term investments in research and development to reduce oil consumption and
provide alternative fuel sources in the transportation sector . In addition to the
economic and environmental benefits of reducing oil consumption, substantial
evidence exists that military and security benefits will accrue from such
investments. UNEXPECTED SOURCES OF CONFLICT Policymakers must also think
systematically about oil-security linkages when monitoring emerging security
threats as the global oil industry transforms itself. With sixteen additional countries potentially
exporting oil in the near future, new international dynamics will materialize, especially in Africa. Furthermore , if oil
prices remain high, incentives for resource grabs will grow. Resource wars are most likely to
as a panacea,
occur in unpopulated territories or naval zones, as oil can be extracted from these areas without the need to
manage a populated, potentially hostile territory. Thus, policymakers should be most concerned about disputed
territories in the East China and South China Seas and naval borders in the Caspian Sea. There are already
competing sovereignty claims to territory in those regions, and considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of
the energy resources located there, creating conditions ripe for miscalculation and mutual suspicion.
Policymakers should be especially concerned about security threats that arise from
unexpected sources, such as allies' energy needs or seemingly benign actions that
prompt hostile responses from rivals.
Aff Answers
Google Not Key

The driverless car is coming now. Companies dont need
Google in fact, their software is better.
Forbes 13 2013 (Why Google Will Lose in Driverless Cars (and Who Will Win),
February 4th, Available Online at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/02/04/why-google-will-lose-indriverless-cars-and-who-will-win/, Accessed on 07-26-15)
Last weeks debate on the Google driverless car raged across Forbes, auto sites and
Google +, yet I found little in the discussion to convince me that this is Googles
opportunity. Last week I said the idea of a Google driverless is nonsense and I
repeat it Google will not be a force in autos. In fact Id go further and say I
doubt this is a disruptive innovation. It is happening incrementally, now. But
what Google has done, through intense lobbying and publicity, is pave the way
beautifully for BMW, Mercedes and Volvo to launch autonomous cars in 2014. Yes,
2014 (go here for information on 4 almost autonomous cars you can drive today).
Within two years these major European manufacturers, particularly BMW and
Mercedes who sell upmarket cars and have the margin to innovate, will have all the
components of an automated car on the road, in production vehicles. For example,
to quote the World Futures Society: BMW plans to extend that idea in its upcoming
i3 series of electric cars, whose traffic-jam feature will let the car accelerate,
decelerate, and steer by itself at speeds of up to 25 miles per houras long as the
driver leaves a hand on the wheel. And: Mercedes is equipping its 2013 model SClass cars with a system that can drive autonomously through city traffic at speeds
up to 25 m.p.h. Heres some more detail: The S-Class will sport a stereo camera on
the windshield to peer ahead in 3D, short- and long-range radar in front and rear,
and short-range radar on the sides. Twelve ultrasonic sensors will detect objects
very close to the carduring self-parking, for example. And added to external
sensors, the S-Class will have internal sensors to monitor drivers. And the other
types of things that will happen, down the range, are more automated braking,
more collision avoidance, more safety, more incremental change that began as long
ago as the early 2000s and whose R&D history spans back to the 1980s. So why
wont these car makers go to Google? To understand that better I talked last week
to Richard Bishop who appeared on Twitter commenting on my post and Chunkas. A
good thing too. He is a former head of the US intelligent highways program and
oversaw public trials of driverless cars in the 1990s. Since then he has been
consulting in this area to car companies and Governments. 1. They dont need
Google The German car makers are using different technology. Heres a brief
description of the technology. The (Google) system combines information gathered
from Google Street View with artificial intelligence software that combines input
from video cameras inside the car, a LIDAR sensor on top of the vehicle, radar
sensors on the front of the vehicle and a position sensor attached to one of the rear
wheels that helps locate the cars position on the map. But Richard points out that
most car manufacturers are not dependent on complex databases and retrieval.
They use sensor technology to recognize what is around them. That provokes me to
ask, might Google be setting itself up for the wrong project. Its system relies on rich
data maps, which can also be created by its laser technology, so it looks like a great
organize the worlds information project. But maybe not that necessary for cars.
However, there is no doubting it could have a role in freight distribution for when
you get used to the idea of lorries on the highways with no driver! 2. They already
do great, safe software. Automated safety technology is in the DNA of Tier 1
suppliers like Bosch who brought the world the first advanced braking systems.
They have years of experience in creating safe software for cars, according to
Richard Bishop, and they test the hell out of it. Before automated cars go down the
car range to mid-market luxury car makers will have more years of experience and
data. Bosch is offering its automated driver technology for 2014, also. 3. Google
has a poor record outside search and ads Googles great moment was its first
monetizing content through search related ads. But its record of pulling off further
disruptive change since then has been poor. Android is an exception but is Google
the real beneficiary there? Samsung benefits. So does Amazon. As do HTC and ZTE.
Googles extra-curricular projects appear more designed to boost its information
businesses and in cars it might just want the opportunity to organize the worlds
spatial information at a deeper level of granularity than it can right now. Can that
goal produce a competitive enough product? What I read into last weeks debate is
that people are thirsty for some disruption and opportunity. Sorry, but this isnt it.
Google not key the government and auto companies are

preparing to manufacture more driverless cars.
Business Insider 15 2015 (Driverless car technology just got a huge
boost, May 17th, Available Online at http://www.businessinsider.com/driverless-cartechnology-just-got-a-huge-boost-2015-5, Accessed on 07-26-15)
In a limited sense, cars have been "driverless" for a long time ever used cruise
control? but they are about to become far more capable, and soon,
revolutionizing the way people get around. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx
promised last week that the federal government will smooth the rollout of driverless
vehicle technologies, removing unnecessary regulatory roadblocks and delays. But
realizing the benefits of driverless technology will require more than smart
regulation; companies and the government will have to convince the public that
driverless cars are safe. The possibilities are tantalizing. "Connected, automated
vehicles that can sense the environment around them and communicate with other
vehicles and with infrastructure have the potential to revolutionize road safety and
save thousands of lives," Mr. Foxx declared last week. Cars are already rolling off
assembly lines with smarter cruise control, automatic braking and lane-centering
technologies. In coming years they will be able to do much more, such as directly
pinging one another, which will combine with radar and laser sensors to make
onboard computers hyper-aware of their surroundings. Driver error causes nearly all
fatal crashes. Computers that never doze off or look down to text could save 30,000
lives a year. Fewer crashes would improve traffic flow. So would putting an end to
bottlenecks caused by rubbernecking. People could reclaim untold hours now spent
in start-and-stop frustration. Even when in their cars, they could devote time to
productive or entertaining activities rather than dealing with the monotony of most
commutes. And they would burn less gasoline per mile traveled. Those who have
disabilities or who are too old to drive could get around far more easily. Car-sharing
would be much easier, as well. Parking could be better organized.
No Transition/Adoption
No transition takes too long because the technology is still in
development. Even then, society has to fully adapt.
Davies 6/10 Alan Davies, Transport and Urban development consultant,
Blogger for the urbanist, 2015 (How long before driverless vehicles take over
cities?, Crickey, Available Online at
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/06/10/how-long-before-driverlessvehicles-take-over-cities/, June 10th, Accessed on 07-26-15)
Driverless vehicles offer huge potential benefits but its unlikely theyll
materialise soon. Besides the regulatory and commercial obstacles, its still
early days for the technology. NYT columnist Joe Nocera is enthusiastic about
the potential of driverless cars to eliminate the 1.2 million deaths on roads
worldwide each year. In an article republished by Fairfax on the weekend (Googles
driverless cars will make roads safer), Mr Nocera says the sooner they are a reality,
the safer well all be. Driverless cars have enormous potential to change the way
we travel, at least in theory. They could indeed virtually eliminate road casualties,
as well as multiply road capacity by as much as eight times according to some
estimates. They could also create productive in-vehicle time (including sleep),
reduce the size of the national vehicle fleet, and significantly lower the cost of
private travel (see Are driverless cars coming?). But while I think governments
should already be thinking about how to deal with them in the future, I dont think
driverless vehicles are going to take over the roads of our cities for a long time yet. I
certainly dont see them having much impact within the 5 year and 10 year time
horizons I commonly see cited by the industry. Most observers seem to think
getting the technology right will be the easiest obstacle to overcome; the major
problems will be how social institutions adapt to the new technology. One
line of thought argues that the complicated legal and social adaptations required by
driverless vehicles, especially during the transition period when theres a mix of
driverless and (much more dangerous) human driven vehicles on the road, will be
extraordinarily difficult.
Full transition takes too long up to 20 years away.

Newsweek 15 2015, (Quora Question: How Will the Transition to Self-Driving
Cars Work?, April 11th, Available Online at http://www.newsweek.com/quoraquestion-how-will-transition-self-driving-cars-work-320442, Accessed on 07-26-15)
Stage 1 is where we are today. Vehicles have various safety systems built with the
basic technologies behind autonomous cars, like 3-D camera systems and
millimeter wave radar. Examples of "Stage 1" technologies: Lane keeping/lane
warning systems, which help you stay in your line by controlling steering or warn
you as soon as you leave (data that's determined by a camera system). Cruise
control radar systems that let you set your cruise control to follow the vehicle
ahead, slowing or braking automatically to avoid a collision. Cross traffic/blind spot
detection systems, which use radar and/or cameras and/or ultrasonic sensors to
"see" around corners, etc. The so-called autopilot system from Tesla (which is
basically just a combination of lane keeping and cruise control radar), Distronic Plus
from Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai's Auto Braking, etc. are all systems that combine
sensors and programming to offer excellent safety and convenience features. Stage
1 technologies are affordable and powerful, and I look forward to the day when all
new vehicles come with these features as standard equipment (they're likely to
become federally mandated safety features this decade). Stage 2 is beginning,
but we're 5-10 years away from meaningful market penetration. Essentially,
Stage 2 is V2X communications, which stands for "vehicle to x." "X" can be other
vehicles as well as infrastructure. V2X will allow vehicles to share their position and
course information with all the surrounding vehicles, as well as data from their
onboard sensing systems. This, in turn, will allow vehicle software to build "models"
of the world around them, filling in gaps with information shared by other vehicles
as well as the roadway. V2X offers tremendous opportunities for improving vehicle
safety, and it may be sufficient (when combined with Stage 1 technologies) to offer
nearly autonomous driving. In terms of market penetration, something like 50% of
vehicles will need to have both sensing systems and V2X communication for the
driving public to see a major shift. But even at low market penetration percentages,
V2X and advanced sensing will save lives. Sidebar: V2X communications will need
to be federally mandated to make any sort of inroads into the marketplace, and
that's years away. Likewise, infrastructure needs to be upgraded to support V2X,
and that's probably decades away. Stage 3 is a combination of V2X, advanced
sensors and (potentially) high-resolution map data. Google, Audi, M-B, Toyota,
Honda, Ford, etc., etc.all are experimenting with Stage 3 right now. All automakers
(or almost all of them) are deploying high-priced LIDAR (laser radar) pods on their
test vehicles, and then combining these high-powered LIDAR systems with radar, 3D cameras and (in most cases) high-resolution map data. The vehicles are designed
to be 100% autonomous without any sort of communication (e.g., no V2X), which
would make them able to drive themselves down a rural road without any driver
input or any shared data. These vehicles are also able to handle all weather
conditions, something that 3-D camera systems can't manage (snow and heavy rain
cripple the effectiveness of 3-D camera systems). Check out this older lidar pod on
this Google Prius, which sort of looks like a single emergency light but is actually a
$20k housing for a bunch of lasers. The technology for stage three vehicles exists
today. The challenge isn't technologicalit's cost. High-resolution LIDAR pods are
tens of thousands of dollars (some cost upward of $80k). Lower-resolution pods are
"only" $8,000 a piece, but they're not really sufficiently precise enough for complete
autonomy. ...Which brings us to map data. If you combine highly precise map data
with good (but not great) LIDAR pods, radar and 3-D cameras, you get a highly
autonomous car that's almost affordable enough for mass production. That's the
technology that Google is pursuingthey're going to put "cheap" LIDAR pods on
slow-moving cars, give these cars hyper-accurate maps and then let people use
them like taxis. The new Google car, with a "cheap" LIDAR pod, a lot of map data
and a 30 mph top-speed. Google thinks they've got the future of the auto industry
in their hands here, but I think the windows need to be tinted much darker. No one
is going to want to be seen in this vehicle as-is. Audi, M-B, Tesla, etc., are all kicking
around systems like I've described, which may or may not rely upon hyper-accurate
mapping data. Of course, as V2X systems become more commonplace, the need for
hyper-accurate map data decreases...vehicles can build and share their own realtime maps with V2X. There would be no need to store or download map data. Thus,
it's possible that Stage 2 and Stage 3 will arrive at the same time...that we'll figure
out affordable, full autonomous vehicles right about the time V2X becomes
commonplace. "But what about all those cars without self-driving systems? Are they
going to ruin it for the rest of us because they're too technologically primitive?"
Probably not. Autonomous cars will be able to measure what's going on in the world
around them, so if the driver of the old-fashioned car decides to do something crazy
and cut you off, your autonomous car will detect it and adjust. With V2X, your
vehicle could identify vehicles that are on autopilot and vehicles that aren't, and
then devote extra resources to checking the activity of the human-piloted vehicle
just in case. "What about bugs/mistakes in these systems that cause accidents (or
worse)?" This is the question that makes me think autonomous cars might actually
be 20 years away. Currently, if an automaker makes a safety mistake, they're
severely penalized by the NHTSA and they're subjected to class-action lawsuits. If
something isn't done to protect automakers from liability, I worry that anyone
driving an "old fashioned" car can expect a massive settlement should they get into
even a minor fender-bender with an autonomous car. A few billion-dollar class action
lawsuit settlements could put a big damper on autonomous car sales. "Will
government embrace fully autonomous cars?" Not right away. We can expect the
NHTSA to demand drivers sit at the steering wheel, hands at the ready to "take
over" whenever they release their first set of standards. We can also expect NHTSA
to demand that drivers are in the driver's seats of fully autonomous vehicles,
especially commercial vehicles that do nothing more than haul goods on the
highway (e.g., commercial trucks).
Alt Causes
Alt causes to development of driverless cars competition and
time for adoption
Fancher 14, Lou Fancher is a Reporter for the SF Weekly, 2014
( Hard Drive: Self-Driving Cars Are Closer Than They Appear ,
February 2014,Available at http://www.sfweekly.com/2014-0219/news/google-self-driving-cars-center-for-automotive-researchdarpa/, Accessed 07-26-15)
Obstacles on the horizon do exist for Google's self-driving cars. They range from large
issues, like insurance (if a smart car has an accident, who's at fault?) to legalities (which features are mandated for
new cars? Is a solo-non-driver using a two-person HOV lane a violation?) to more straightforward concerns, like
weather (rain is okay, but fog and snow are tough) and unusual circumstances ("Odd intersections, art bikes, Oscar
Meyer Weinermobiles and other drivers doing weird things," Montemerlo explained).
Google's cars rely on
algorithm-driven maps that track the world like a video game, but creating models
for flattened squirrels, abandoned mattresses, and kids on bikes is a challenge. And
then there are the competitors. Richard Wallace, director of Transportation Systems Analysis at Ann
Arbor, Michigan's Center for Automotive Research (CAR), says Google may not be any further ahead or fully
invested than automakers. The difference, he writes in an e-mail, is that "automakers do not do R&D in the public
(and their competitors') eye." Wallace said Audi, Mercedes, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, and other
manufacturers "are not far off," maybe as close as 2018. Despite heavy competition, W allace
says the role
of Silicon Valley in the fast-moving field is enormous. "Google has been extremely
important in bringing automated vehicle technology into the spotlight and
motivating the auto industry to accelerate its development ," he says. The company's recent
addition of radar, a step beyond its primary, 3-D imaging technology, will increase its self-driving car's viability, he
adds. Michigan, given its automotive history, is one of the "automated technology hotbeds" Wallace identified,
especially in the development of connected, vehicle-to-vehicle technology.
weather, venture capital momentum, and dedicated-lanes infrastructure,
Silicon Valley, with its no-snow
suggests a likely location for
introducing mainstream drivers to the technology that will make them non-drivers .
Montemerlo and Wallace predicted that lesser forms of automation (adaptive cruise control, lane-centering, blindspot detection, parking- and traffic-jam assist) will continue to be incrementally released. "The average vehicle on
the road today is 11.4 years old," Wallace says. "Anything more advanced that comes out in maybe 2020 will be
operating in mixed traffic for a long time to come. One day, you'll find you almost never control your new vehicle. I
think that is about 2025." But why stop at a car that can merely drive itself?
Montemerlo says "self-
aware" cars that can cruise "driverless" are likely 10 to 15 years out. Cars that can
"reason about the world" are even further on the horizon, maybe even impossible.
Until a car can
recognize that the driver next to us is too preoccupied with his Slurpee, humans will
remain behind the wheel.
Alt cause China will pursue driverless cars

Mui 13, Chunka Mui is a Managing Director at Devils Advocate
Group, authored three books related to business development,
and holds a BS in Computer Science from MIT, 2013 (Google's
Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car -- Part 3: Sooner Than You Think, January 30, 2013,
Available Online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/30/googlestrillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-3-sooner-than-you-think/3/, Accessed online 07-2615)
Although there are too many imponderables and cross-industry conflicts to imagine
that the U.S. federal government would get involved any time soon, one can
imagine scenarios where more interventionist governments, like Chinas, might
intervene. China has greater incentives to adopt driverless cars because its rates of accidents and fatalities per
100,000 vehicles is more than twice that of the U.S., and its vehicle counts and total fatalities are growing rapidly. In
the Chinese government could be motivated to accelerate the adoption of

driverless cars because of the trillions of dollars that it would save by building fewer
and narrower roads, by eliminating traffic lights and street lights and by reducing
fuel consumption. And then there is the competitive dimension. A driverless car initiative would
fit into several of the seven strategic industries that the government is supporting.
Chinese researchers have already made significant progress in the arena. And, of
course, if China perfects a driverless-car system, it could export that system to the
rest of the world.
addition,
Driverless cars wont be modeled five reasons

Mui 13, Chunka Mui is a Managing Director at Devils Advocate
Group, authored three books related to business development,
and holds a BS in Computer Science from MIT, 2013 (Google's
Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car -- Part 3: Sooner Than You Think, January 30, 2013,
Available Online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/30/googlestrillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-3-sooner-than-you-think/3/, Accessed online 07-2615)
The car will cost too much. Estimates are that each Google research car costs more
than $300,000. This means, as BusinessInsider noted, that it costs more than a Ferrari. Prices
anywhere near these levels will keep the car out of reach for mass adoption.
Customers wont buy it. There is a widespread sense that most customers would never give up their spot in
the drivers seat, or trust a driverless car. Reader @jackarmstrong brilliantly captured this zeitgeist in his comment
to Part 1 of this series: For most American drivers, the car is our iconic dream machine, and our personal freedom
and status statement. Americans dream about cars, and no able bodied person dreams to be driven, by
robot cars, no matter how persuasive the stats appear on paper. Theres too much liability. In our litigious society,
car makers would never offer products that took the human out of the loop and thus shifted the liability for
accidents to themselves. Legal liability for car makers could be huge if a malfunctioning car injured or killed people.
The car violates current business models. As I laid out in Part 2,
the driverless car has enormous
ripple effects across a number of industriessome of which are quite dire. It could
be in car makers, car dealers, insurers, taxicab associations, etc., best interests to
delay driverless technology as long as possible . Reader @Jacob Haynes articulated this issue well:
It is not Google that will sell this technology to consumers, it is auto manufacturers. Sadly, no auto
manufacturer will sell a technology that will decrease the number of times cars are
wrecked and that will make it easier to share cars . Also, in the short term, it might be
more prudent for car makers to market driverless technology as expensive options
to existing designs, rather than to take Googles disruptive approach . The transition
would take decades. The fleet of cars on the road turns over roughly every 10 to 15
years, so even if driverless cars were in production today it would be many years
before they dominated our highways and started delivering the promised benefits. If
the driverless car takes that long to matter, it might never happen, or at least not happen in our lifetimes. After all,
were still waiting for our Jetsons-like flying cars. My sense is that even under incremental-change scenarios, some
of these hurdles would dissolve rather quickly. Cost is the easiest to address. The components on which the
driverless car depends are improving at the speed of Moores Law. Following Moores Law, a gigabyte of memory
cost $300,000 in 1981 but less than $10,000 a decade later, less than $10 a decade after that and less than 10
cents today. From $300,000 to a dime in three decades: Thats the trajectory that the electronics in the driverless
car are on. Cost will also decrease as developers optimize their designs for production, as opposed to building
prototypes. Personal habits would surely slow adoption, but people could come to trust the cars as
evidence of effectiveness piled up. New drivers, immersed in computing technology since birth, might be more
trusting than older drivers. After all, lots of people used to be scared witless about flying, but that issue has largely
faded. Theres already evidence that young people are much less interested in driving than those of us of a certain
age were. It seems that being able to connect via Tumblr and Facebook reduces the need to actually drive
somewhere and meet a friend face-to-face. And it might be that aging baby boomers, raised with a love of cars and
independence but faced with diminishing driving abilities, would embrace driverless cars as the best of the options
available to them. The
liability issue is trickiercomputers are completely capable of flying planes,
including takeoffs and landings, yet, for liability reasons, every commercial flight has two humans in pilots seats.
study
by Rand Corp. concluded that existing liability case law does not seem to present unusual liability
concerns for owners or drivers of vehicles equipped with autonomous vehicle technologies. Instead, the study
predicted the decrease in the number of accidents and the associated lower insurance cost would encourage
drivers and auto insurers to adopt the technologyunlike with airplanes, where deaths are rare, there are tens of
thousands of preventable deaths in cars each year. The same study did predict that manufacturers product liability
would likely increase and that this might slow the introduction of the technology. The Rand study suggested,
government might intervene and mandate self-driving cars if they prove to

be half as safe as Google claims. After all, almost 370,000 people died on American roads between
though, that
This week Audi and BMW were the

latest to unveil advances in their driverless car technology at the
Consumer Electronics Show .
2001 and 2009 and millions more were injured.
Barriers to driverless car adoption regulation and full

adoption will occur in 2050
Falk 14, Tyler Falk is a reporter for ZD net, 2014
(When will every car be driverless?, January 10, 2014, Available at
http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-will-all-the-cars-be-driverless/,
Accessed 07-26-15)
But while just about every major car company has a self-driving car they're showing off (here's BMW's latest video)
and intentions to add semi-autonomous features to new cars in the near future, the question remains: when will we
self-driving cars actually be on the roads in significant numbers?
question is the research company IHS.
The latest to try to answer that
In a new study, the company predicts that globally there will
be 54 million self-driving cars on the road by 2035, with annual sales rising from 230,000 in 2025 to 11.8 million in
By 2050, the company says, "nearly all of the vehicles in use are likely to be
self-driving cars or self-driving commercial vehicles." What will the driverless technology
features add to the price of the car? IHS says that driverless technology will add between
$7,000 and $10,000 to a cars sticker price in 2025 . That premium is expected to drop to $5,000
in 2030 and $3,000 in 2035. Of course, there are still plenty of hurdles before reaching any of
these milestones, decades away. But the biggest one likely won't be technology. "hTe only thing
that is stopping us is the legal stuff," Patrick Heinemann, an engineer of advanced driver assistance
systems for Audi AG, told the Associated Press. In the United States, there are numerous states -- from
Florida to California -- that are trying to make sure they are ahead of the curve with
driverless car laws already on the books. But a new study from RAND Corporation looking at the
benefits and challenges of self-driving cars says that these laws could lead to a "patchwork of
conflicting regulatory requirements that vary from state to state, which could
undermine potential benefits." For policymakers, RAND has four suggestions: Avoid passing regulations
2035.
prematurely while the technology is still evolving. Update distracted-driving laws. Clarify who will own the data
generated by this technology and how it will be used, and address privacy concerns Regulations and liability rules
should be designed by comparing the performance of autonomous vehicles to that of average human drivers and
the long-term benefits of the technology should be incorporated into determinations of liability. But once those are
sorted out, RAND believes the benefits of self-driving cars -- from increased safety to increased fuel economy -- will
outweigh the challenges.
Oil Impact Defense

Energy independence does nothing for the economy doesnt
change consumer prices, production, and too many alt causes
Kaufmann 14 John Kaufmann is an energy policy analyst for 30 years with the
Oregon Department of Energy, 2014 ("The Energy Independence Illusion,"
Resilience, 3-28-2014, Available Online at http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-0429/the-energy-independence-illusion, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
We currently import about 8 million barrels of oil per
day, more than 40% of the oil we use. We pay about $1 billion a day for that oil, or
$350-$400 billion per year. That represents more than half of our current accounts
deficit. Increased domestic production reduces our current accounts deficit and
should help strengthen the dollar. This is a real and substantial benefit, though not
enough to turn around our economy by itself. The RAND Corporation estimates that about 15%
of our military budget$83 billion of a total $518 billiongoes to protect access to oil in the
Middle East. Would energy independence free us of that responsibility? Because of
the quantity of oil in question and the dependence of our major allies, its likely that
would maintain a strong presence there even if we were energy independent. There
ECONOMY Lets look at the economy first.
likely will be savings here, but probably not as much as one would hope. Some sources believe that energy
independence will mean lower prices for consumers. However ,
any increased domestic production

will come from unconventional sources, such as shale oil or tar sands, which are
more expensive than conventional oil. It only became economic to produce because
of high world oil prices over the last several years. In addition, oil prices are tied to
the world price of oil. Energy independence will not reduce consumer prices. Most
importantly, conventional world crude oil production has peaked, affecting the ability to
grow the economy. This paradigm shift contributed to the fiscal crisis of 2008 and has dampened attempts
to pull out of it. Unconventional oil is too expensive and its flow rates are too low to
replace conventional oil or rejuvenate economic growth. No monetary or fiscal
policies will reverse or overcome this fundamental choke on the global economy. The
age of rapid growth is over. We are entering an era of slow or no growth. Increased domestic oil production may
help to stabilize the economy, or perhaps even to continue to grow it, albeit at a slower rate than in the past. But
drilling or fracking our way to energy independence, while it may provide a

temporary shot-in-the-arm, is not sustainable for long . Oil is a limited resource, and
costs will only increase either of which will prevent it from being our economic
salvation. While energy certainly affects the economy (energy costs above about 6 percent of GDP have been
associated with economic recessions), it is not the only factor. Thomas Friedmans book That Used To Be Us
lists five pillars of prosperity going forward: education, infrastructure, immigration policy,
government-funded R&D (which includes renewable energy), and financial
regulation. Others have suggested additional or different factors. We have more to gain by
investing in these issues rather than throwing more money into growing domestic
oil production from finite and increasingly expensive unconventional sources. The
latter is just throwing money down a rat hole.
No risk of foreign oil threats or escalation no one cares if we

are independent or not
Kaufmann 14 John Kaufmann is an energy policy analyst for 30 years with the
Oregon Department of Energy, 2014 ("The Energy Independence Illusion,"
Resilience, 3-28-2014, Available Online at http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-0429/the-energy-independence-illusion, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
The argument is that energy independence
will ensure that our national security is not jeopardized by oil price or supply
problems emanating from abroad. It will also allow us more flexibility in foreign policy, especially in the
Middle East. OPEC hasnt used oil as a political weapon in 35 years. They apparently
recognize that embargoes and price spikes hurt them as well as importing nations.
Thats not to say something couldnt happen. The Gulf monarchies are aging and autocratic, and
face upheaval sooner or later. If they are replaced by anti-Western radicals, world oil
security will be destabilized and/or threatened. However, this is a danger to the world, not just to
the US. We prop up the Gulf monarchies. That may be distasteful, and one may wish it werent so. But
if we withdrew, the alternative could easily be worse not only for western energy
security, but for terrorism, peace and stability around the region and beyond, and
perhaps even for the prosperity of the region and hopes for democracy . Its a case of
damned if we do, damned if we dont. Second, the U.S. is relatively energy independent
already. We are self-sufficient in coal and mostly self-sufficient in natural gas (we
import about 15 percent of our natural gas from Canada). We do import about half of our oil but
our major suppliers are Canada and Mexico. Only a small portion is from the Middle
East. Europe and Japan are much more dependent on imports from Russia and the Middle East than the US is.
Next, lets look at foreign policy and national security.
Their security and prosperity likely would affect US interests more than any energy-related actions directed against
us. But increased US oil production will not be enough to make ourselves energy independent, much less our allies.
If we achieve energy independence and our partners and allies dont, we are still
vulnerable both economically and in terms of national security and foreign policy.
Third, would energy independence give the U.S. more latitude on foreign policy? Lets
look at some specific cases. What about Syria? A major drought in 2006-2011 created food
shortages and drove a million Syrians into neighboring areas. Sectarian tensions and the hope of the Arab Spring
then lit this tinder. Syria has been mentioned as a possible route for a pipeline to move natural gas from Qatar to
Europe as an alternative to Russian natural gas. That may have attracted some western interest, and it is possible
that European dependence on oil and natural gas from Russia may have muted the Wests response. However,
one of the US main interests presumably is to break Syrias political alignment with
Russia and Iran in hopes of alleviating its border dispute with Israel and the
transport of weapons through Syria to Hezbollah . US energy independence wouldnt
make a fundamental difference, though European energy independence may have given them a chance
to exert more influence. Egypt? One of the causes of the Egyptian uprising in 2011 was
the loss of revenue as declining Egyptian oil production drove them to become a net
oil importer. This caused food and gasoline subsidies to be cut, leading to steep price rises that people couldnt
afford. Egyptian energy independence would help, but not American energy
independence. Would it help resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff? We have been
independent of Iranian oil for 35 years. It was the economic, trade, scientific, and military sanctions
that were successful in getting Iran to the negotiating table. US energy independence is irrelevant .
What about 9/11? Osama bin Ladens Letter to America listed US support for Israel, western interference in
Muslim countries, and Western values as the main reasons behind the attack. Energy independence would have
Its doubtful that US energy independence would have affected our

response in Afghanistan, since that nation possesses little oil. Energy
made little difference.
independence wouldnt do anything to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

since neither side has any oil to use as leverage . What about Crimea or Ukraine?
Russia provides a third of Europes oil and gas, so European energy independence might have made Russia think
twice but thats not in the cards. In addition, Crimea and Ukraine are vital to Russian interests Crimea is Russias
only access to a warm sea port, and Ukraine is Russias major source of wheat and is a buffer against western
encirclement of Russia. What could the West do differently if it were energy independent? Would it really risk
European energy independence

might make them more willing to endorse stronger sanctions; US energy
independence is irrelevant as Russia only exports a small amount of oil to the US
military confrontation? Doubtful. Probably sanctions, just like now.
(under 4% of US imports and falling). Sen. Rand Pauls response to the Crimean crisis would be to drill, drill, drill.
Gen. James Jones, former National Security Advisor, says the Keystone XL Pipeline should be approved to signal to
Putin that energy security cannot be used as a weapon. Those kinds of responses are pipedreams. The Eurozone
imports 9 mbd. No amount of drilling or fracking will make the US energy independent, much less Europe.
Meanwhile, the XL pipeline will move only 800,000 barrels of oil per day. These strategies arent exactly threats to
The only case where US energy

independence might have made a difference was the two Iraq Wars, which were
unquestionably about preserving access to the worlds second largest reserves.
However, even there, the sheer quantity of oil at stake may have been too tempting
to have prevented US intervention. In summary, energy independence would do little to
prevent or resolve foreign policy entanglement in the Middle East and elsewhere . In
addition, our fate is intertwined with that of Europe, Japan, China and others as they go, so go we. We have
more to gain by modeling behavior and encouraging and assisting others to reduce
their use of oil, than by trying to achieve energy independence for ourselves.
Russias oil and gas exports, or leverage to curtail their ambitions.
Impact Turn
Oil independence leads to a collapse in U.S./Middle East
relations
Anderson 14 Richard Anderson is a business Reporter for BBC News, 2014
("How American energy independence could change the world," BBC News, 4-12014, Available Online at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-23151813, Accessed
7-22-2015)//CM
A number of countries export huge amounts of oil to the US; exports that
would all but disappear if the US achieves energy independence. The impact on
these economies, particularly in South America, Africa and the Middle East, would be
significant. For example, in 2011, Ecuador's oil exports to the US were worth about
$6.5bn, or 8% of the country's GDP. In Colombia the figure was 7%. Even Canada, one of the world's
Oil exporters
economic powerhouses and a member of the G8, would be hit hard. Again, of course, the loss would not be felt
it's not just direct exports to the US that would be hit. America is
currently the world's biggest importer of oil, so if it was no longer buying, the oil
price would inevitably drop. This would hurt all oil producers, and compound the
problem for big exporters to the US. This "double whammy would result in a transfer
of wealth from producer to consumer countries", Mr Dales explains. Geopolitics and the
Middle East With energy independence secured, America's interest in oil in the
Middle East would inevitably wane. Much depends on your own view of how important oil is to US
foreign policy, but some commentators have compared American policy in Syria, a
relatively minor oil producer, with that in Iraq, one of the biggest producers in the
world. You only have to look at Europe's reaction to Russia's move into Crimea to
see how intertwined energy security and foreign policy are - with Russia supplying about a
overnight. But
third of Europe's energy, EU leaders' hands are, to a large extent, tied. Whether oil is the most important driver of
US foreign policy in the Middle East is a moot point. "Oil is a very important aspect of US interests, but you can't
ignore the others," says Alexia Ash at IHS. She says the US is very concerned both about stability in the region,
particularly as it borders both Russia and China, and its image as a global superpower. The US also has strong
historical ties with Saudi Arabia, including lucrative defence contracts. Others argue the US is already starting to
withdraw from some of its overseas interests. As Ms Ash asks :
"If the ideological battles are lost,

does the US start to retreat into its own shores?" Energy independence allows it to
do just that.
Privacy Turn
Googles collection of your data is much worse than NSAs
collection
Newman 13, Nathan Newman is a lawyer and Ph. D, who received his JD from the Yale
Law School, co Director of Berkeleys Center for Community of Economic Research, and is
Ph. D is sociology from UC Berkeley, 2013(Why Google's Spying on User Data Is Worse
than the NSA's, July 1, 2013,Available online at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/why-googles-spying-onuse_b_3530296.html, Accessed online at 07-22-15)
There is an odd cadence to the debate on the National Security Agency spying on
user data supplied by social media companies like Google and Facebook , as if the
comprehensive, integrated profiles of user data controlled by large multinational corporations was only a problem
I opposed the Patriot Act and follow-up

amendments and think the national security state is a danger that needs to be
severely reined in. Which is why I was quite happy that Edward Snowden's disclosures have highlighted the
problem of national security state access to user data created in the wake of 9-11. But the potential
abuses due to corporate access to that data are as bad as the NSA control -- and
the documented harm to the public has been worse . Illegal Corporate Data Collection Let's start
with data collection itself. While the legal basis for the NSA collection has been challenged,
both the courts and Congressional Committees overseeing the collection have
generally approved the program. Compare that to companies like Google, which
have violated the law repeatedly to collect user data. Google's illegal "wi-spy" program of
when the government got hold of them. Don't get me wrong.
collecting user data over home wi-fi hubs using its Street View cars has led to investigations and fines for violations
Investigators were outraged when they reviewed the

downloaded data and found Google had collected massive amounts of personal
emails and data revealing everything from people's medical histories to their sexual
preference to marital infidelity. (Google's defense that that it was all okay because they never looked at
of the law in countries around the world.
the illegally collected data is eerily similar to the NSA's). When challenged on its illegal data collection, the
company lied and stonewalled investigators around the world, with the Federal Communications Commission
finding the company guilty of "willfully" ignoring subpoenas to delay investigations into the scandal, fining the
company in a 25-page condemnation in April 2012 that concluded "Google's failure to cooperate with the Bureau
Both Google and Facebook were charged with violating

privacy laws in launching their social media networks and both had to agree to 20year consent decrees to monitor their privacy policies. But a year after entering its consent
decree, the Federal Trade Commission found Google had secretly placed "cookies" to track the
online activities of people using the Safari web browser , despite having publicly "told these
was in many or all cases deliberate."
users they would automatically be opted out of such tracking." Google had deliberately found a vulnerability in
Safari's "default cookie-blocking setting" in order to collect the information for its advertising data collection
purposes, while publicly misrepresenting to users that it was not doing so. The company paid a $22.5 million fine for
The illegal
data collection is just the start of the problem with corporate use of personal data . At
this illegal data collection operation. The Harm to Users from Corporate Misuse of Personal Data
least one reason I think the NSA spying hasn't led to a public opinion backlash calling for its end is that there's been
no documentation of the program being used to harm individual Americans. But we know for a fact that
companies like Google are giving corporate advertisers access to users based on
the personal data they control -- and many of those advertisers are targeting
individuals with the express intent to rip them off, sell them deadly products, and
financially impoverish them. Some advertisers are just trying to help customers find a product they might
like, but the dark version of online marketing is that it can facilitate what economists call "price discrimination,"
selling the same exact good at a variety of prices in ways unknown to the buyers. Researchers Rosa-Branc Esteves
and Joana Resende highlight how with the low costs of online advertising, such online price discrimination
systematically shifts wealth from consumers to corporate profits. One implication of their models is that "average
prices with mass advertising [i.e. without the discrimination allowed by targeting individual users online] are below
those with targeted advertising," which follows the idea that firms will target certain consumers with promotions
while enjoying higher prices paid by consumers kept ignorant of lower prices offered to others. Early Internet
visionary Jaron Lanier, who pioneered ideas like "virtual reality" two decades ago, has noted that such access to
behavioral targeting has even more appeal to the "tawdry" kinds of firms than the "dignified side of capitalism",
since "ambulance chasers and snake oil salesmen" among the capitalist class thrive on such targeted access to
their victims. And the specter of racist use of that data is all too real; As ColorLines magazine has argued, a "user's
browsing history, their location and IP information...combined with information available in Google's public data
explorer (including US census, education, population, STD stats, and state financial data) presumably could also be
folded into the personalized search algorithm to surmise a lot more than your race." While not conclusive, there is
evidence of companies using names or other evidence such as physical location to offer differential advertising
through Google based on race and ethnicity. Targeting Consumers for Financial Ruin What is unquestionable is that
Google advertising lay at the heart of the largest example of price discrimination and consumer harm of the last few
decades, namely the subprime mortgage destruction of family wealth and the financial crisis that followed. Google
isn't usually identified as a big player in the subprime mortgage debacle and its aftermath, but a significant portion
of Google's profits in the mid-2000s were coming straight from subprime mortgage lenders advertising on its site.
As Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy said back in 2007, "Many online companies depend for a
disproportionate amount of their income on financial services advertising, with subprime in some cases accounting
for a large part of it." Companies enticed customers with unrealistic "teaser rates" -- heavily advertised online -that burdened borrowers with toxic terms and unmanageable obligations that exploded in later years. And as the
racial and exploitive aspect of the mortgage meltdown was endemic with what some scholars described as reverse
This offering of
differential rates based on the characteristics of the borrower constitutes the most
damaging price discrimination inflicting consumer harm in American history, for
which Google played an integral (and profitable) role as an advertising intermediary
where it was earning billions of dollars a year in that role. The financial industry remains the
bedrock of Google's advertising revenues. According to WordStream, a company specializing in helping
companies bid effectively on Google Ads, the three most expensive categories of
keyword searches as measured by cost per click are in financial services (insurance,
redlining, "the practice of targeting borrowers of color for loans on unfavorable terms."
loans and mortgages), with 45.6 percent of the top 10,000 advertising keywords falling in those categories. And
many of those advertising bidders at Google are from the more bottom-feeding aspects of the industry, particularly
payday loan lenders, who offer extremely high-interest loans for consumers made in exchange for a commitment to
repayment from the person's next paycheck. Such loans have been banned or severely restricted as exploitative in
multiple states. Google actively solicits ads from the payday lending industry, including setting up a trade booth at
Robert X. Cringely, who

has covered Silicon Valley for over 25 years, argues that out of financial selfinterest, Google is burying bad news about the industry for consumers, since he
found Google "placed the uniformly negative news items near the bottom of the
results, below the fold as we used to say in the newspaper business. " Whether Google is
actively hiding damning consumer analysis of the evils of its financial advertisers, what is true is that Google
maintained ads from fraudulent mortgage "loan modification" firms preying on
desperate homeowners even after the company was alerted to the problem . Despite
the Online Lenders Alliance, a trade group comprised mainly of payday lenders.
consumer group Consumer Watchdog publishing a scathing report highlighting the concentration of such firms
advertising online,
Google did nothing until the Treasury Department took regulatory

action in November 2011 under its TARP authority to shut down 85 of these scam
advertisers who were luring customers through Google . "Many homeowners who fall prey to
these scams, initially do so through these Web banners and other Web advertising," Christy Romero, Deputy Special
You just can't separate the

massive financial destruction of American households in the recent financial crisis
and its aftermath from the corporate use of consumer data to target ads and suck
consumers into those financial scams. Bottom-Feeders Exploiting User Data Online In a similar vein, a
Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said in an interview.
whole range of scam artists, fake drug peddlers and underage "escort" services use user data provided by
corporate partners like Google to find their victims. In 2012,
Google agreed to pay a $500 million
civil forfeiture to the federal government, one of the largest in history, as part of a
settlement penalizing the company for illegally and knowingly allowing illegal
pharmacies to advertise on its site. This was not passive activity by Google, but active complicity with
advertisers often selling fake prescription medicine to desperately ill individuals or marketing illegal steroids.
"[Google CEO] Larry Page knew what was going on," Peter Neronha, the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney who led the
probe, told the Wall Street Journal. The National Association of Human Trafficking Victim Advocates (NAHTVA) along
with 37 other prominent anti-trafficking organizations have accused Google of profiting off of the sex trafficking of
women, while a recent session of the National Association of Attorneys General noted the widespread targeting of
ads for illegal products to users online, including recruiting children as underage "escorts" and pushing illegal drugs
Given the documented history of online corporate exploitation of user data, it

becomes ridiculous to argue that it's a bigger problem that the NSA was grabbing
the data then that corporate exploiters like Google had the data themselves in the
first place. Even a lot of ostensible "lefties" seem to be a bit too complacent in seeing the only problem with
to kids.
centralized data control being when government has it. Imposing Regulation and Transparency on Data Collection
and Use by Both Government and Corporations None of this is to say we don't need to more tightly rein in how the
National Security Agency uses personal data, but some of that has been done already and more is being talked
about in Capitol Hill. The missing piece is any serious movement on reining in corporate control of personal data.
Google and Facebook and other data mining companies are trying to position themselves as defenders of user
California tried to pass simple law this year to allow users to simply
find out what data has been collected about them by online companies -- the
privacy equivalent of a credit report -- those same companies mobilized and killed
the bill dead in its tracks. (See Silicon Valley Stomps on Digital Disclosure Bill). Governments and
privacy, but when
companies are going to have more data about than we are comfortable with -- that's a fact of life in the digital age.
In many cases, I'm actually happier to have government with the data than private companies -- we all know the
ways private insurance companies have used health data to discriminate against sick patients. But across the
board, people should have far greater knowledge of exactly what data governments and corporations have about
the national security state can't abuse

potential dissidents with that data and that predatory financial firms aren't assisted
by companies like Google in preying on consumers using their data either.
them and we need much tougher rules to make sure that
Google is not good for users privacy Nest acquisition proves

Rosenfeld 14 Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow covering democracy
issues. He is a longtime print and broadcast journalist and has reported for
National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, Marketplace, TomPaine.com and many
newspapers. He has written and co-authored three books on voting rights
since 2004, including Count My Vote, 2014 (4 ways Google is destroying
privacy and collecting your data, February 5 2014,Available online at
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/4_ways_google_is_destroying_privacy_and
_collecting_your_data_partner/, Accessed 07-21-15)
No longer content to vacuum up, scan, index and sell analytics based on the
content of our texts, emails, searches, locations and more, Google now has a new
target: tapping, mapping and colonizing the networks wiring our lives . Google argues
that it has the right to collect your most sensitive data, as long as it flows across an open WiFi network,
PrivacySOS.org said last month after Google announced a $3.2 billion acquisition of
Nest, which sells WiFi-controlled home heating appliances. Now do you want to let this
company inside your home? Uhm I hate to break this to the ACLUgiven theyre supposed to be on the cutting
edge of the privacy debatebut the thing is, Googles already in our homes, commented PandoDailys Yasha
Levine. It has been in our homes for a long, long time. And not just in our homes, but at work, in our cars and even
when were walking down the street. As many have pointed out the privacy concerns of this development are
huge, wrote two other PandoDaily writers, Carmel Deamicus and Michael Carney. Nest
products track
detailed information about their users movements, in addition to things like a

users WiFi IP address, and whether the specific address is a home or a business .
The acquisition will help Google close the circle of search, people and goods in a
broad Internet of Everything, wrote Wall Street Journal editor Michael Hickins. As Aaron Levie, CEO of
Box Inc. tweeted, With home automation, self-driving cars, robots, mobile, and life sciences, Google is setting itself
up to own the 21st century. Anyone who cares about maintaining some degree of privacy should pay attention.
Google has been doing a lot more than its lobbyists and executives have disclosed
when defending or promoting its initiatives . Here are four examples that undescrore Googles
corporate ethos that any data it can grab is Googles for the taking. 1. Street View: not just street mapping. After
Google admitted last March that its weird-looking cars outfitted

with roof cameras facing four directions were not just taking pictures; they were collecting data
from computers inside homes and structures, including passwords, e-mails and
other personal information from unsuspecting computer users, the New York Times
reported. 2. Gmail: prying and spying. This October, a federal judge refused to dismiss a
potential class-action lawsuit brought by Gmail users who objected to its practice of
analyzing the content of all the messages on its network and selling byproducts to
advertisers. Those suing Google said it violated federal wiretap laws. This issue isnt new to Google. In
being sued by 38 states,
congressional testimony in 2009, Googles lawyers said its email technology was used for scanning for spam,
computer viruses and serving ads within the Gmail users experience. But last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy
Koh held that Google never told Gmail users that Google would create personal profiles and target users with ads.
Nor did people who are not Gmail users, but who were writing to Gmail addresses, agree to let Google collect and
parse their messages. 3. Google Safari: not just hunting WiFi. Googles court record includes more than just
the Wall Street Journal broke the story that its

software was bypassing security settings for Apple devices using the Safari browser .
grabbing and snatching data. In early 2012,
Google hated this [Safaris anti-tracking features] and used a secret code to bypass this security setting, the blog
GoogleExposed wrote. This exposed millions of Safari users to tracking for months without them even knowing
In August 2012, the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million, its
largest civil fine, noting that Google also had violated previous privacy agreements.
about it.
4. Android: another data gateway. One year after the FTC fine, ComputerWorld.coms Michael Horowitz, who writes
its Defensive Computing feature, noted Google was back to its old tricks. Google
knows nearly every

WiFi password in the world, he declared, explaining that was the result of backdoor access to hundreds of
millions of phones and devices using its Android operating system. Sounds great. Backing up your data/settings
makes moving to a new Android device much easier, Horowitz wrote, citing how the company sold this feature to
What is not said,

is that Google can read the WiFi passwords. The good news, he said, is that this feature can be
turned off. The bad news is that, like any American company, Google can be compelled by agencies
of the U.S. government to silently spill the beans . ComputerWorld was careful not to pick just on
Google for domestic spying. DropBox, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, FaceBook, Skypeand others
all do pretty much the same thing: read user data and grant government access
to it. But Googles mission, detailed in its patents, stands apart. Its business is
based on analyzing user metrics with ever-growing precision, and selling those
insights to advertisers. Thus, the recent handwringing by Google CEO Eric Schmidt
that Googleand otherswas taken advantage of by Americas top spymasters following
Edward Snowdens still-unfolding National Security Agency whistleblowing, is more than hollow. Its a farce. The
record shows that Google knows exactly what it is doing. 2014 is likely to be a year where the
trade-off for more profits and data for Google will be the loss of privacy. Its not paranoid
to say that Googles acquisition of Nest is at the cutting edge of colonizing the links
between our electronic devices and our lives. The trend of aggregating all the data thats out there
consumers. It lets Google configure your new Android device very much like your old one.
is behind many privacy-invading social media products, such as an app launching this week that literally allows a
Google
will start selling its voice- and video-capturing Glass eyewear. Google Glass may be
man to walk into a bar, see a woman and know her name before he even says hello. Later this summer,
fantastic as a hands-liberating computing platform, but it also enables its users to

film, analyze or spy upon others from afar. Its up to us to say where the red lines
should be drawn.
No difference between metadata and actual data Google

knows everything about you and dont use that data
effectively
Schneir 15, Bruce Schneir is a fellow for the Centor of Internet and
Security at Harvard Unviersity, 2015 ( NSA Doesnt Need to Spy on Your Calls to
Learn Your Secrets, Available online at http://www.wired.com/2015/03/data-andgoliath-nsa-metadata-spying-your-secrets/, Accessed online at 07-22-15)
Web search data is another source of intimate information that can be used for surveillance. (You can argue
whether this is data or metadata. The NSA claims its metadata because your search terms are embedded in the
We dont lie to our search engine. Were more intimate with it than with our
friends, lovers, or family members. We always tell it exactly what were thinking about, in as clear
words as possible. Google knows what kind of porn each of us searches for, which old
lovers we still think about, our shames, our concerns, and our secrets. If Google
decided to, it could figure out which of us is worried about our mental health,
thinking about tax evasion, or planning to protest a particular government policy . I
used to say that Google knows more about what Im thinking of than my wife does. But
that doesnt go far enough. Google knows more about what Im thinking of than I
do, because Google remembers all of it perfectly and forever . I did a quick experiment with
URLs.)
Googles autocomplete feature. This is the feature that offers to complete typing your search queries in real time,
based on what other people have typed. When I typed should I tell my w, Google suggested should i tell my wife
Google knows who

clicked on those completions, and everything else they ever searched for. Googles CEO
i had an affair and should i tell my work about dui as the most popular completions.
Eric Schmidt admitted as much in 2010: We know where you are. We know where youve been. We can more or
We kill people based on metadata. FORMER NSA

DIRECTOR MICHAEL HAYDEN If you have a Gmail account, you can check for
yourself. You can look at your search history for any time you were logged in. It goes back for as long as youve
had the account, probably for years. Do it; youll be surprised. Its more intimate than if youd sent
Google your diary. And while Google lets you see it, you have no rights to delete
anything you dont want there. There are other sources of intimate data and
metadata. Records of your purchasing habits reveal a lot about who you are. Your tweets tell the world what
time you wake up in the morning, and what time you go to bed each night. Your buddy lists and address
books reveal your political affiliation and sexual orientation. Your email headers reveal who is
central to your professional, social, and romantic life. One way to think about it is that data is
content, and metadata is context. Metadata can be much more revealing than data,
especially when collected in the aggregate. When you have one person under surveillance, the
contents of conversations, text messages, and emails can be more important than the metadata. But when you
have an entire population under surveillance, the metadata is far more meaningful,
important, and useful. As former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker said: Metadata absolutely
tells you everything about somebodys life. If you have enough metadata you dont
really need content. In 2014, former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden
remarked: We kill people based on metadata. The truth is, though, that the
difference is largely illusionary. Its all data about us.
less know what youre thinking about.
Googles claims of consumer privacy protections are false

Wall Street Journal proves
Thurne and Kane 10, Scott Thurm is a Senior Editor for the Wall Street
Journal and Yukari I. Kane was a former reporter of 15 years for the WSJ,
2010 (Your Apps Are Watching You, December 18 2010, Available online at
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704368004576027751867039730,
Accessed online at 07-22-15)
Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their
pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real nameeven a unique ID number that can
never be changed or turned off. These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and
regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"games
and other software applications for iPhone and Android phonesshowed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique
device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's
location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders. WSJ's Julia Angwin explains to
Simon Constable how smartphone apps collect and broadcast data about your habits. Many don't have privacy
policies and there isn't much you can do about it. MORE What Can You Do? Not Much What Settings to Look For How
One App Sees Location Without Asking Unique Phone ID Numbers Explained The Journal's Cellphone Testing
Methodology Complete Coverage: What They Know The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking
companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them. Among the apps
tested, the iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating
system. Because of the test's size, it's not known if the pattern holds among the hundreds of thousands of apps
available. Apps sharing the most information included TextPlus 4, a popular iPhone app for text messaging. It sent
the phone's unique ID number to eight ad companies and the phone's zip code, along with the user's age and
gender, to two of them. Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender,
location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss
players try to throw paper wads into a trash caneach sent the phone's ID number to at least five ad companies.
Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies. "In the
world of mobile, there is no anonymity," says Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association, an industry trade
group. A cellphone is "always with us. It's always on." iPhone maker Apple Inc. says it reviews each app before
Both Apple and Google say they protect users by requiring apps to
obtain permission before revealing certain kinds of information, such as location.
"We have created strong privacy protections for our customers, especially regarding
location-based data," says Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. "Privacy and trust are
vitally important." The Journal found that these rules can be skirted . One iPhone app,
offering it to users.
Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission. Apple
declines to comment on whether the app violated its rules. Smartphone users are all but powerless to limit the
tracking. With few exceptions, app users can't "opt out" of phone tracking, as is possible, in limited form, on regular
computers. On computers it is also possible to block or delete "cookies," which are tiny tracking files. These
techniques generally don't work on cellphone apps. The makers of TextPlus 4, Pandora and Grindr say the data they
pass on to outside firms isn't linked to an individual's name. Personal details such as age and gender are
volunteered by users, they say. The maker of Pumpkin Maker says he didn't know Apple required apps to seek user
approval before transmitting location. The maker of Paper Toss didn't respond to requests for comment. JOURNAL
COMMUNITY Many apps don't offer even a basic form of consumer protection: written privacy policies. Forty-five of
Neither
Apple nor Google requires app privacy policies . To expose the information being shared by
the 101 apps didn't provide privacy policies on their websites or inside the apps at the time of testing.
smartphone apps, the Journal designed a system to intercept and record the data they transmit, then decoded the
data stream. The research covered 50 iPhone apps and 50 on phones using Google's Android operating system.
(Methodology available here.) The Journal also tested its own iPhone app; it didn't send information to outsiders.
the most widely shared detail

was the unique ID number assigned to every phone. It is effectively a "supercookie, "
says Vishal Gurbuxani, co-founder of Mobclix Inc. , an exchange for mobile advertisers. On iPhones,
this number is the "UDID," or Unique Device Identifier. Android IDs go by other names. These IDs are set by
phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system, and typically can't be
blocked or deleted. "The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says
The Journal doesn't have an Android phone app. Among all apps tested,
"That's
how we track everything." Ms. O'Holleran says Traffic Marketplace, a unit of Epic Media Group, monitors
Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps.
smartphone users whenever it can. "We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much
time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go," she says. She says the data is aggregated and not linked
to an individual. MORE FROM THE SERIES A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name Web's New Goldmine: Your Secrets
Personal Details Exposed Via Biggest Sites Microsoft Quashed Bid to Boost Web Privacy On Cutting Edge, Anonymity
in Name Only Stalking by Cellphone Google Agonizes Over Privacy On the Web, Children Face Intensive Tracking
'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web Facebook in Privacy Breach Insurers Test Data Profiles to Identify Risky Clients
Shunned Profiling Technology on the Verge of Comeback Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs The Tracking
Ecosystem Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter Complete Coverage: What They Know The main companies setting
ground rules for app data-gathering have big stakes in the ad business. The two most popular platforms for new
U.S. smartphones are Apple's iPhone and Google's Android. Google and Apple also run the two biggest services, by
Google ad networks let advertisers target

groups of users. Both companies say they don't track individuals based on the way they use apps. Apple limits
revenue, for putting ads on mobile phones. Apple and
what can be installed on an iPhone by requiring iPhone apps to be offered exclusively through its App Store. Apple
reviews those apps for function, offensiveness and other criteria. It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for
products that match your interests. WSJ's Christina Tsuei explains how advertisers use cookies to track your online
habits. Apple says iPhone apps "cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and
providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used." Many apps tested by the
Journal appeared to violate that rule, by sending a user's location to ad networks, without informing users. Apple
Android operating
system are made by companies including Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Google doesn't review the apps, which can be downloaded from many vendors.
Google says app makers "bear the responsibility for how they handle user
information." Google requires Android apps to notify users, before they download
the app, of the data sources the app intends to access. Possible sources include the
phone's camera, memory, contact list, and more than 100 others. If users don't like what a
declines to discuss how it interprets or enforces the policy. Phones running Google's
particular app wants to access, they can choose not to install the app, Google says. "Our focus is making sure that
users have control over what apps they install, and notice of what information the app accesses," a Google
Neither Apple nor Google requires apps to ask permission to access

some forms of the device ID, or to send it to outsiders. When smartphone users let
an app see their location, apps generally don't disclose if they will pass the location
to ad companies Lack of standard practices means different companies treat the same information differently.
spokesman says.
For example, Apple says that, internally, it treats the iPhone's UDID as "personally identifiable information." That's
because, Apple says, it can be combined with other personal details about peoplesuch as names or email
addressesthat Apple has via the App Store or its iTunes music services. By contrast,
Google and most app
makers don't consider device IDs to be identifying information . A growing industry is

assembling this data into profiles of cellphone users. Mobclix, the ad exchange, matches more than 25 ad networks
with some 15,000 apps seeking advertisers. The Palo Alto, Calif., company collects phone IDs, encodes them (to
obscure the number), and assigns them to interest categories based on what apps people download and how much
time they spend using an app, among other factors. By tracking a phone's location, Mobclix also makes a "best
guess" of where a person lives, says Mr. Gurbuxani, the Mobclix executive. Mobclix then matches that location with
spending and demographic data from Nielsen Co. In roughly a quarter-second, Mobclix can place a user in one of
150 "segments" it offers to advertisers, from "green enthusiasts" to "soccer moms." For example, "die hard gamers"
are 15-to-25-year-old males with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a
time. Mobclix says its system is powerful, but that its categories are broad enough to not identify individuals. "It's
about how you track people better," Mr. Gurbuxani says. Some app makers have made changes in response to the
findings. At least four app makers posted privacy policies after being contacted by the Journal, including Rovio
Mobile Ltd., the Finnish company behind the popular game Angry Birds (in which birds battle egg-snatching pigs). A
spokesman says Rovio had been working on the policy, and the Journal inquiry made it a good time to unveil it. Free
and paid versions of Angry Birds were tested on an iPhone. The apps sent the phone's UDID and location to the
Chillingo unit of Electronic Arts Inc., which markets the games. Chillingo says it doesn't use the information for
advertising and doesn't share it with outsiders. Apps have been around for years, but burst into prominence when
Apple opened its App Store in July 2008. Today, the App Store boasts more than 300,000 programs. Other phone
makers, including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. and Nokia Corp., quickly built their own app stores.
Google's Android Market, which opened later in 2008, has more than 100,000 apps. Market researcher Gartner Inc.
estimates that world-wide app sales this year will total $6.7 billion. Many developers offer apps for free, hoping to
profit by selling ads inside the app. Noah Elkin of market researcher eMarketer says some people "are willing to
tolerate advertising in apps to get something for free." Of the 101 apps tested, the paid apps generally sent less
Ad sales on phones account for less than 5% of the $23 billion in

annual Internet advertising. But spending on mobile ads is growing faster than the
market overall. Central to this growth: the ad networks whose business is connecting advertisers with apps.
data to outsiders.
Many ad networks offer software "kits" that automatically insert ads into an app. The kits also track where users
spend time inside the app. Some developers feel pressure to release more data about people. Max Binshtok, creator
of the DailyHoroscope Android app, says ad-network executives encouraged him to transmit users' locations. Mr.
Binshtok says he declined because of privacy concerns. But ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as
much money as untargeted ads, Mr. Binshtok says. "We are losing a lot of revenue." Other apps transmitted more
The Android app for social-network site MySpace sent age and gender, along with a
device ID, to Millennial Media, a big ad network. In its software-kit instructions, Millennial Media lists 11 types of
information about people that developers may transmit to "help Millennial provide
more relevant ads." They include age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation
and political views. In a re-test with a more complete profile, MySpace also sent a user's
income, ethnicity and parental status. A spokesman says MySpace discloses in its privacy policy that
data.
it will share details from user profiles to help advertisers provide "more relevant ads." My Space is a unit of News
Corp., which publishes the Journal. Millennial did not respond to requests for comment on its software kit. App
makers transmitting data say it is anonymous to the outside firms that receive it. "There is no real-life I.D. here,"
says Joel Simkhai, CEO of Nearby Buddy Finder LLC, the maker of the Grindr app for gay men. "Because we are not
tying [the information] to a name, I don't see an area of concern." Scott Lahman, CEO of TextPlus 4 developer Gogii
Inc., says his company "is dedicated to the privacy of our users. We do not share personally identifiable information
or message content." A Pandora spokeswoman says, "We use listener data in accordance with our privacy policy,"
which discusses the app's data use, to deliver relevant advertising. When a user registers for the first time, the app
asks for email address, gender, birth year and ZIP code. Google was the biggest data recipient in the tests. Its
AdMob, AdSense, Analytics and DoubleClick units collectively heard from 38 of the 101 apps. Google, whose ad
Google's
main mobile-ad network is AdMob, which it bought this year for $750 million. AdMob
lets advertisers target phone users by location, type of device and "demographic
data," including gender or age group. A Google spokesman says AdMob targets ads based on what it
units operate on both iPhones and Android phones, says it doesn't mix data received by these units.
knows about the types of people who use an app, phone location, and profile information a user has submitted to
the app. "No profile of the user, their device, where they've been or what apps they've downloaded, is created or
stored," he says. Apple operates its iAd network only on the iPhone. Eighteen of the 51 iPhone apps sent
information to Apple. Apple targets ads to phone users based largely on what it knows about them through its App
Store and iTunes music service. The targeting criteria can include the types of songs, videos and apps a person
downloads, according to an Apple ad presentation reviewed by the Journal. The presentation named 103 targeting
categories, including: karaoke, Christian/gospel music, anime, business news, health apps, games and horror
movies. People familiar with iAd say Apple doesn't track what users do inside apps and offers advertisers broad
categories of people, not specific individuals. Apple has signaled that it has ideas for targeting people more closely.
In a patent application filed this past May, Apple outlined a system for placing and pricing ads based on a person's
"web history or search history" and "the contents of a media library." For example, home-improvement advertisers
might pay more to reach a person who downloaded do-it-yourself TV shows, the document says. The patent
application also lists another possible way to target people with ads: the contents of a friend's media library. How
would Apple learn who a cellphone user's friends are, and what kinds of media they prefer? The patent says Apple
could tap "known connections on one or more social-networking websites" or "publicly available information or
private databases describing purchasing decisions, brand preferences," and other data. In September, Apple
introduced a social-networking service within iTunes, called Ping, that lets users share music preferences with
friends. Apple declined to comment. Tech companies file patents on blue-sky concepts all the time, and it isn't clear
whether Apple will follow through on these ideas. If it did, it would be an evolution for Chief Executive Steve Jobs,
who has spoken out against intrusive tracking. At a tech conference in June, he complained about apps "that want
to take a lot of your personal data and suck it up."
Google is the largest data collector in the world It is

inevitable for them to gain your data
If you are anything like me, you love a lot of what Google offers. As soon as I fire up my Google Chrome browser, I
head over to Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs or Picasa. And whenever I stop
These services are mostly free and

reliable, why should I think twice about using them? There is a reason. Google most likely
wasting my time on Google+, I continue doing so on YouTube.
has more data about people in its data bases than any other organization in the
world. More than the former Soviet KGB could have hoped to get in its wildest dreams. If you have teenaged kids
with an Android phone, then Google almost certainly knows quite a few things about them,
that you don't. Google may know where they are at any moment via Google
Latitude, who all their friends and acquaintances are via their synchronized contact
list, what they did last night via their uploaded pictures, and what they say about
you via Google Talk. Now, one might say if you are worried about this, then simply stop using these Google
services and you are off the hook. Really? If you don't go near the Internet, then that's probably the case. But if you
Google will still collect data from your website visits via
services they provide for webmasters. We collect statistics about a number of such services for our
happen to live in the 21st century,
surveys. These services are Service Percentage of websites using it Google Analytics 55.6% AdSense 18.3%
DoubleClick 1.6% Teracent < 0.1% Google Web Servers 1.0% Blogger 0.9% Google Sites < 0.1% Google +1 (incl.
the old Google Buzz) 11.3% Google Library API soon to be published Taking these figures, we investigated how
We had to take into account the overlaps, e.g.

some sites use Analytics and AdSense, therefore we cannot simply add the usage
figures. This is what we found out: the percentage of websites that use any of these Google services is 63.5%. In
many sites are not using any of these services.
other words Only 36.5% of the web is Google-free. This is a very conservative estimate, because there are several
popular Google services that we don't monitor: embedded YouTube videos, embedded Google Maps, Google Site
Search, Google Checkout and Feedburner are some examples. However, the services that we left out tend to be
used on individual web pages only, whereas the services from our surveys are typically used on all or on most
pages of a site. Therefore, the percentage of web pages that are Google-free is almost certainly even lower than
36.5%, but probably not much lower. What does that mean ?
Suppose somebody wants to stay away

from Google out of concern for privacy or for any other reason. Suppose that person
does some research on the web and visits any 5 websites that are not owned by
Google. Then the chance that none of these sites uses any Google service, so that
no traces are left on any Google server, is 0.65% The probability of providing data to
Google when visiting 5 random websites, without actively using any Google service,
is 99.35%. There are a few things one could discuss concerning that figure, I will try to address some of them:
The various Google services run on separate servers, it is not possible to combine all these data. While it is
technically not possible to have something like a super-cookie covering all Google property and thus readily
identifying a visitor along the way, techniques such as Browser Fingerprinting combined with all the other data a
website visitor leaves behind, can achieve pretty much the same. I think of this like a jigsaw puzzle, where Google
tries to bring all these little data points together. They will never find and properly locate all the pieces, but it's
sufficient to have plenty of them in place in order to recognize the picture. I'm quite confident that the smart guys
at Google know a thing or two about digging into large amounts of data. You can turn off JavaScript and use Ad
Blockers, so that you are not affected. Disabling some (but not all) of the Google data collection is possible. Google
itself provides tools such as the Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-ons, and there are any number of third-party tools.
However, selecting, configuring and updating these tools on several browsing platforms such as PCs, smartphones
and tablets, is more effort than most people and most company's IT administrators are willing to spend. Who cares?
I trust Google more than I trust any

government in the world, including my own, but that's a low bar. Call me naive, but I don't believe
terrible misuse of the data is planned at the Googleplex at this moment. I think that
Google knows best that one can lose people's confidence only once, and as soon as
a Google ad is generally perceived as a severe privacy issue, that would pretty
much be the end of the company. But that doesn't mean that things can't go wrong at some stage.
Some people do, others don't. I personally must say that
Certainly, seeing all those mountains of data in one place does leave a nervous feeling. Mistakes are made, even at
Google, as has been known to happen again and again. There could be data leaks, or outright criminal conduct, or a
And while at the subject of governments of the world,

all that data being available may well, under certain circumstances, give them too
more information about me than I want them to have . Whatever your personal conclusions are,
change of Google's policies at any time.
I hope that this little investigation will contribute to making data collectors, surfers, webmasters and law makers
alike aware of the magnitude of the problem.
We have reached a critical point where it's next to
impossible for an individual to decide where and when he or she wants to give away
some data to the biggest data collector. It all happens with or without you.
Revenue K2 Cars
Even Google officials admit that Google wont build the entire
car itself no way revenue is key.
Levy 15 Ari Levy is CNBC's senior technology reporter in San Francisco, 2015
("Google driverless car needs users, then revenue," CNBC, 5-27-2015, Available
Online at http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/27/google-driverless-car-needs-users-thenrevenue.html, Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
Google's self-driving car needs users before the company can even think about the
business model, says Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani. "You got to build it first and if the
users come, then you figure out how to monetize it," Kordestani said on Wednesday at the Code
Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. "That's true of all of our friends in the industry from
the Facebooks of the world and others." In a wide-ranging interview covering everything from
the core search business and relations with Apple to the European Union's
investigation and Google's crazy "moonshots," Kordestani acknowledged that the
company is unlikely to build and sell its own car. Read MoreApple vs. Google: Mapping "We'd
like to do that through partnerships," he said. Auto-related technology has been a hot topic at the
conference. General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that 14 new Chevrolet models are
baking in connected media technology from Apple and Google, and Apple's Jeff
Williams called cars "the ultimate mobile device." Despite Kordestani's statement, Google
recently showed a driverless car that it built from the ground up.
Google is planning on partnering up with companies means

no unique internal link
Langley 14 Hugh Langley is the Associate Editor @TechRadar, 2014 ("Google
won't build its own self-driving cars, it's going to partner up instead," TechRadar, 1222-2014, Available Online at http://www.techradar.com/us/news/car-tech/googlewon-t-build-its-own-self-driving-cars-it-s-going-to-partner-up-instead-1278028,
Accessed 7-26-2015)//CM
2015 is set to be a big year for driverless cars, and Google is on the prowl for
manufacturers to build them. Project director Chris Urmson has confirmed that
Google won't build its autonomous vehicles itself, but will partner up with
established names to do grafting instead. "We don't particularly want to become a
car maker," Urmson told The Wall Street Journal. "We are talking [with] and looking
for partners." Fleet commander Urmson said that the team is working with a number of
car suppliers to build a fleet of 'beta one' cars, which will be more advanced that the
dinky prototypes we've already seen in action. These will be tested starting early 2015. "It
would be goofy for us to try to replicate their success," said Urmson on not going it
alone. He added that Google's laser radar technology (LIDAR) can create an accurate image of the car's
surrounding at a "reasonable" cost. If that sounds familiar it's because Google's Project Tango will boast a similar
environment-mapping feature when it launches next year.
No Spillover
No spillover pro-privacy legislative action is dependent
without crisis.
Kerr 4 Orin S. Kerr, Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University
Law School, B.S.E. 1993, Princeton University; M.S. 1994, Stanford University; J.D.
1997, Harvard Law School, 2004 (Technology, Privacy, And The Courts: A Reply To
Colb And Swire, Michigan Law Review (102 Mich. L. Rev. 933), Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
Contrary to Swire's suggestion, I think that statutory protections also tend to reach
a middle ground. If there is a general trend toward lesser statutory protection over
time, it is not clear to me. Swire focuses on the fact that Congress did not act on an
Internet privacy bill that the House Judiciary Committee approved in 2000, but then
passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001. To Swire, this suggests that the legislative
process is broken: Congress passed (bad) pro-government legislation but not (good)
pro-privacy legislation, leading to less privacy. n19 I find it difficult to draw a lesson
from this example. It is worth noting, however, that in Swire's own example the
legislative process rejected FBI and DOJ proposals and instead attempted to push
the law in a strongly pro-privacy direction. Then, when Congress passed some of the
proposals a few years later, it did so only under remarkable circumstances and even
then only subject to a sunset provision. n20 If Swire's example is supposed to show
a trend toward [*938] lessening privacy protection over time, then it is at best a
mixed signal. More broadly, the privacy/security pendulum swings both ways;
while there may be times of crisis when the pendulum swings in favor of law
enforcement, there are other periods when the pendulum swings in favor of privacy.
I would pose this question to Swire: if there is a systematic tendency toward greater
surveillance, in what year was privacy most protected by the legislative process? In
1960, when federal law did not forbid wiretapping? In 1970, before FISA was
enacted? In 1980, before Congress passed ECPA?
Turn: Surveillance causes public backlash which increases

privacy.
Moncrieff, Venkatesh, and West 9 Simon Moncrieff, research fellow in
the Department of Computing at Curtin University of Technology, Svetha Venkatesh,
professor in the Department of Computing at Curtin University of Technology, and
Geoff West, professor in the Department of Spatial Sciences at Curtin University of
Technology and at the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, 2009
(Dynamic privacy in public surveillance Computer, 42(9)
http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30044204/venkatesh-dynamicprivacy-2009.pdf)
As surveillance becomes increasingly intrusive, public opposition to these
technologies will grow. Lawmakers will be pressured to force organizations that
develop and deploy surveillance systems to incorporate additional privacy
protections. However, because legislation tends to lag behind technology, such
measures will inevitably inhibit preexisting systems functionality. Designing
surveillance systems with privacy in mind, rather than as an afterthought, will

accelerate the adoption of privacy policies in surveillance and reduce the impact of
enforced privacy measures.6 For example, Google did not foresee privacy issues
with Street View and thus did not incorporate privacy protections into the initial
release of this feature in 2007. In response to public outcry, the company instituted
several measures including the blurring of facial images and vehicle number plates
and reducing image resolution to limit discernible information about pedestrians
and vehicles. However, there is still considerable debate as to whether these
measures go far enough; other identifying data such as location, clothes, and
stature/gait are evident in Street View and may violate local privacy laws.
Electronic Medical Records DA
Notes
This is a DA that links to affs that increase privacy regulations
of some sort. The evidence on government privacy regulations
spilling over and hurting private companies abilities to collect
data/operate efficiently is pretty good.
The 1NC impact is disease, but you can read the economy
module in the block as well.
A lot of the cards for uniqueness/internal link section of the
Google DA apply here I recommend using them for
extensions in the block.
These cards are simply those cards but specific to
electronic medical records.
Also, probably some of the generic disease impact cards/big
data solves health care cards may apply here as well.
Good luck! Let me know if I can update/cut/change anything
~Rishika
1NC Shell
1NC Electronic Medical Records DA

Privacy regulations impose costs on hospitals that prevent
them from adopting EMR systems
Miller and Tucker 9 Amalia R. Miller, Associate Professor of Economics at
the University of Virginia, holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and
an S.B. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Catherine
Tucker, Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan, Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program,
received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the Erin Anderson
Award for Emerging Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Paul E. Green Award for
contributions to the practice of Marketing Research and a Garfield Award for her
work on electronic medical records, holds a PhD in economics from Stanford
University, and a BA from the University of Oxford, 2009 (Privacy Protection and
Technology Diffusion: The Case of Electronic Medical Records, Management
Science, Vol. 55, No. 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via JStor,
Accessed 7/22/15)
At the same time, privacy laws may impose additional network costs on
hospitals who wish to transfer information electronically, for example, by
demanding more of a paper trail, or by requiring more robust software. The design
of networked EMR systems with strong security and confidentiality protections
involves well-known challenges. Individual consent requirements that can be limited
to particular types of information and provider destinations demand a flexibility that
is costly to implement (Win and Fulcher 2007). It is more expensive to design a
system that has the additional flexibility to limit the flow of information by the type
of detail in a patient medical record and by the type of external destination,
irrespective of how many patients refuse to have their records shared.
Confidentiality protection that demands prior patient consent, which can be
revoked at any time, also increases the costs of information exchange.
McCarthy et al. (1999) give details of how privacy legislation that requires subjects
to give their consent for each study used in research led to lower response rates.
When individual consent was required by state law, it was granted by 19% of
individuals, as opposed to 93% of patient records made available directly by
providers in states without this privacy protection. Finally, in addition to the fixed
costs that are added to the complexity of designing the EMR system, the laws
require additional documentation, and that burden increases with the flow of
information between providers. Theoretically, therefore, privacy regulation can
affect the fixed or the variable costs of EMR adoption, and without detailed
breakdowns of the costs involved, we cannot distinguish between the two.
Privacy protection inhibits EMR diffusion not by creating a different legal
requirement for different record types, but by raising compliance costs. Complying
with privacy laws increases the costs of electronic record systems and, in
particular, the costs of sharing information. This is particularly important if one
of the key benefits of EMRs is the reduced costs of sharing information as compared
with paper records. In this sense, the laws may pose an institutional barrier to
information flow, which in turn reduces the potential benefits to hospitals from
the adoption of EMRs, a technology that would otherwise reduce the physical
barriers to information exchange. Although it would be desirable to estimate the

effects of privacy regulation on network costs and benefits separately, we observe
neither of these outcomes. Using data on adoption decisions, we can identify only
the net effect of privacy law on network benefits.
Privately collected data is the backbone of effective health

care systems reduces costs and mortality rates
The 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH)
Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, devoted $19.2 billion to
increase the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) by health care providers.
Underlying this substantial public subsidy is a belief that creating an electronic
rather than a paper interface between patient information and health care providers
can improve health care quality, facilitate the adoption of new technologies, and
also save money.
EMRs are the backbone software system that allows health care providers to
store and exchange patient health information electronically. As EMRs diffuse to
more medical practices, they are expected to reduce medical costs and improve
patient care. For example, they may reduce medical costs by reducing clerical
duplication; however, there are no universally accepted estimates concerning how
much money EMRs will save. Hillestad et al. (2005) suggest that EMRs could reduce
Americas annual health care bill by $34 billion through higher efficiency and safety,
assuming a 15-year period and 90% EMR adoption.
In contrast, the clinical benefits from EMR systems have been demonstrated in
recent empirical work (Miller and Tucker 2011a).1 This research examines effects of
the digitization of health care on neonatal outcomes over a 12-year period.
Neonatal outcome is a measure commonly used to assess the quality of a nations
health care system and is important in its own right. As we discuss in depth later,
Miller and Tucker (2011a) is also directly relevant to the current chapter, as it
measures the relationships among health care outcomes, hospitals adoption of
information technology, and state-level privacy regulation.
Miller and Tucker (2011a) find that a 10% increase in basic EMR adoption
would reduce neonatal mortality rates by 16 deaths per 100,000 live births,
roughly 3% of the annual mean (521) across counties. Furthermore, they find
that a 10% increase in hospitals that adopt both EMRs and obstetric-specific
computing technology reduces neonatal mortality by 40 deaths per 100,000 live
births. This finding suggests there are increasing gains from the digitization
of health care. The paper shows that the reduction in deaths is driven by a
decrease in deaths from conditions that can be treated with careful monitoring
and data about patient histories. There is no such decrease for conditions where
prior patient data are not helpful from a diagnostic standpoint.
Overall, Miller and Tucker (2011a) document that the use of patient data by
hospitals helps to improve monitoring and the accuracy of patient medical histories.
More broadly, even basic EMR systems can improve the quality of data repositories
and ease access to relevant patient information. Adoption of technologies that
facilitate data collection and analysis can help hospitals to improve outcomes and
perhaps to reduce costs.
Diseases coming now and risk extinction effective healthcare

is key to check
Naish 12 (Reporter for Daily Mail, The Armageddon virus: Why experts fear a
disease that leaps from animals to humans could devastate mankind in the next five
years Warning comes after man died from a Sars-like virus that had previously only
been seen in bats Earlier this month a man from Glasgow died from a tick-borne
disease that is widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217774/The-Armageddon-virus-Whyexperts-fear-disease-leaps-animals-humans-devastate-mankindyears.html#ixzz3E5kqxjQI)
The symptoms appear suddenly with a headache, high fever, joint pain, stomach pain and vomiting. As the illness progresses, patients can develop large areas of bruising and
uncontrolled bleeding. In at least 30per cent of cases, Crimean-Congo Viral Hemorrhagic Fever is fatal. And so it proved this month when a 38-year-old garage owner from Glasgow, who
had been to his brothers wedding in Afghanistan, became the UKs first confirmed victim of the tick-borne viral illness when he died at the high-security infectious disease unit at
Londons Royal Free Hospital. It is a disease widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia and one that has jumped the species barrier to infect humans with deadly
effect. But the unnamed mans death was not the only time recently a foreign virus had struck in this country for the first time. Last month, a 49-year-old man entered Londons St
Thomas hospital with a raging fever, severe cough and desperate difficulty in breathing. He bore all the hallmarks of the deadly Sars virus that killed nearly 1,000 people in 2003 but
. Nor was it any other virus yet known to

medical science. Worse still, the gasping, sweating patient was rapidly succumbing
to kidney failure, a potentially lethal complication that had never before been seen
in such a case. As medical staff quarantined their critically-ill patient, fearful questions began to mount. The stricken man had recently come from Qatar in the Middle
blood tests quickly showed that this terrifyingly virulent infection was not Sars
East. What on earth had he picked up there? Had he already infected others with it? Using the latest high-tech gene-scanning technique, scientists at the Health Protection Agency
The results were

extraordinary. Yes, the virus is from the same family as Sars. But its makeup is completely new. It has come not from humans, but from animals. Its closest known relatives
have been found in Asiatic bats. The investigators also discovered that the virus has already killed someone. Searches of global medical
databases revealed the same mysterious virus lurking in samples taken from a 60year-old man who had died in Saudi Arabia in July . Scroll down for video Potentially deadly: The man suffered from CCHF, a
started to piece together clues from tissue samples taken from the Qatari patient, who was now hooked up to a life-support machine.
disease transmitted by ticks (pictured) which is especially common in East and West Africa Potentially deadly: The man suffered from CCHF, a disease transmitted by ticks (pictured)
which is especially common in East and West Africa When the Health Protection Agency warned the world of this newly- emerging virus last month, it ignited a stark fear among medical
experts. Could this be the next bird flu, or even the next Spanish flu the worlds biggest pandemic, which claimed between 50million and 100million lives across the globe from 1918
In all these outbreaks, the virus responsible came from an animal. Analysts
The terrifying fact is that viruses that manage to
jump to us from animals called zoonoses can wreak havoc because of their
to 1919?
now believe that the Spanish flu pandemic originated from a wild aquatic bird.
astonishing ability to catch us on the hop and spread rapidly through the population
when we least expect it. The virus's power and fatality rates are terrifying One leading British virologist , Professor John Oxford at
Queen Mary Hospital, University of London, and a world authority on epidemics,
warns that we must expect an animal-originated pandemic to hit the world within
the next five years, with potentially cataclysmic effects on the human race.
Such a contagion, he believes, will be a new strain of super-flu , a highly infectious virus that may
originate in some far-flung backwater of Asia or Africa, and be contracted by one
person from a wild animal or domestic beast, such as a chicken or pig. By the time the first victim has
succumbed to this unknown, unsuspected new illness, they will have spread it by coughs and sneezes to family, friends, and all those gathered anxiously around them. Thanks
to our crowded, hyper-connected world, this doomsday virus will already have
begun crossing the globe by air, rail, road and sea before even the best brains in
medicine have begun to chisel at its genetic secrets. Before it even has a name, it will have started to cut its lethal
swathe through the worlds population. The high security unit High security: The high security unit where the man was treated for the potentially fatal disease but later died If this new
They die because of something

called a cytokine storm a vast overreaction of their strong and efficient
immune systems that is prompted by the virus. This uncontrolled response burns them with a fever and wracks their bodies
with nausea and massive fatigue. The hyper-activated immune system actually kills the
person, rather than killing the super-virus. Professor Oxford bases his
prediction on historical patterns. The past century has certainly provided us with many disturbing precedents. For example, the
2003 global outbreak of Sars, the severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed
nearly 1,000 people, was transmitted to humans from Asian civet cats in China. More... Man, 38,
virus follows the pattern of the pandemic of 1918-1919, it will cruelly reap mass harvests of young and fit people.
dies from deadly tropical disease after returning to the UK from Afghanistan Nine-year-old who turns YELLOW with anger: Brianna must spend 12 hours a day under UV lights because of
rare condition In November 2002, it first spread among people working at a live animal market in the southern Guangdong province, where civets were being sold.
Nowadays, the threat from such zoonoses is far greater than ever, thanks
to modern technology and human population growth. Mass transport such as airliners can quickly fan
outbreaks of newly- emerging zoonoses into deadly global wildfires. The Sars virus was spread when a Chinese professor of respiratory medicine treating people with the syndrome fell ill
when he travelled to Hong Kong, carrying the virus with him. By February 2003, it had covered the world by hitching easy lifts with airline passengers. Between March and July 2003,
some 8,400 probable cases of Sars had been reported in 32 countries. It is a similar story with H1N1 swine flu, the 2009 influenza pandemic that infected hundreds of millions throughout
Once these
stowaway viruses get off the plane, they dont have to learn a new language or new
local customs. Genetically, we humans are not very diverse; an epidemic that
can kill people in one part of the world can kill them in any other just as easily . On top
of this, our risk of catching such deadly contagions from wild animals is
growing massively, thanks to humankinds relentless encroachment into
the worlds jungles and rainforests, where we increasingly come into contact for
the first time with unknown viral killers that have been evolving and incubating in
wild creatures for millennia. This month, an international research team announced it had identified an entirely new African virus that killed two
the world. It is now believed to have originated in herds of pigs in Mexico before infecting humans who boarded flights to myriad destinations.
teenagers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2009. The virus induced acute hemorrhagic fever, which causes catastrophic widespread bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and
mouth, and can kill in days. A 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl who attended the same school both fell ill suddenly and succumbed rapidly. A week after the girls death, a nurse
who cared for her developed similar symptoms. He only narrowly survived. The new microbe is named Bas-Congo virus (BASV), after the province where its three victims lived. It belongs
A report in the journal PLoS Pathogens says the virus

probably originated in local wildlife and was passed to humans through insect bites
or some other as-yet unidentified means. There are plenty of other new viral
candidates waiting in the wings, guts, breath and blood of animals around
us. You can, for example, catch leprosy from armadillos, which carry the virus in their shells and are responsible for a third of leprosy cases in the U.S. Horses can transmit the Hendra
virus, which can cause lethal respiratory and neurological disease in people. In a new book that should give us all pause for thought, award-winning U.S.
natural history writer David Quammen points to a host of animal-derived infections
that now claim lives with unprecedented regularity . The trend can only get worse,
to a family of viruses known as rhabdoviruses, which includes rabies.
he warns. Quammen highlights the Ebola fever virus, which first struck in Zaire in 1976. The viruss power is terrifying, with fatality rates as high as 90 per cent. The latest mass
outbreak of the virus, in the Congo last month, is reported to have killed 36 people out of 81 suspected cases. According to Quammen, Ebola probably originated in bats. The bats then
infected African apes, quite probably through the apes coming into contact with bat droppings. The virus then infected local hunters who had eaten the apes as bushmeat. Quammen
'It is inevitable we will

have a global outbreak' Studies of the viruss genes suggest it may have first evolved as early as 1908. It was not until the Sixties that it appeared in
believes a similar pattern occurred with the HIV virus, which probably originated in a single chimpanzee in Cameroon.
humans, in big African cities. By the Eighties, it was spreading by airlines to America. Since then, Aids has killed around 30million people and infected another 33 million. There is one
mercy with Ebola and HIV. They cannot be transmitted by coughs and sneezes. Ebola is transmissible from human to human through direct contact with bodily fluids. It can be stopped
If HIV could be transmitted by air, you and I might already be

dead. If the rabies virus another zoonosis could be transmitted by air, it would
be the most horrific pathogen on the plane t. Viruses such as Ebola have another limitation, on top of their method of transmission.
by preventing such contact, Quammen explains.
They kill and incapacitate people too quickly. In order to spread into pandemics, zoonoses need their human hosts to be both infectious and alive for as long as possible, so that the virus
But there is one zoonosis that can do all the

right (or wrong) things. It is our old adversary, flu. It is easily transmitted through the air, via sneezes and
can keep casting its deadly tentacles across the worlds population.
coughs. Sars can do this, too.
But flu has a further advantage. As Quammen points out: With Sars, symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that
Unlike Sars the symptoms of this new disease may not

be apparent before the spread of infection Isolation: Unlike Sars the symptoms of this new disease may not
be apparent before the spread of infection That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. But with
influenza and many other diseases, the order is reversed. Someone who has an
infectious case of a new and potentially lethal strain of flu can be walking
about innocently spluttering it over everyone around them for days before
they become incapacitated. Such reasons lead Professor Oxford, a world authority on epidemics,
to warn that a new global pandemic of animal-derived flu is inevitable . And, he says, the clock is
ticking fast. Professor Oxfords warning is as stark as it is certain: I think it is inevitable that we will have another
big global outbreak of flu, he says. We should plan for one emerging in 2017-2018 . But
are we adequately prepared to cope? Professor Oxford warns that vigilant surveillance is the only real answer that we have. New flu strains are a
day-to-day problem and we have to be very careful to keep on top of
them, he says. We now have scientific processes enabling us to quickly identify the genome of the virus behind a new illness, so that we know what we are dealing with.
The best we can do after that is to develop and stockpile vaccines and antiviral
drugs that can fight new strains that we see emerging . But the Professor is worried our politicians are not taking this
person becomes highly infectious. Isolation:
certainty of mass death seriously enough. Such laxity could come at a human cost so unprecedentedly high that it would amount to criminal negligence. The race against newly-
A pandemic virus needs to win only once and

it could be the end of humankind.
emerging animal-derived diseases is one that we have to win every time.
2NC/1NR Uniqueness
Adoption High
EMR adoption high in the status quo
Health and Human Services 14 U.S. Department of Health & Human
Services, HHS Press Office, 2014 (More physicians and hospitals are using EHRs
than before: CDC data provides baseline for EHR adoption among health care
providers, Health and Human Services, August 7, Available Online at
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/08/20140807a.html, Accessed 7/26/15)
Significant increases in the use of electronic health records (EHRs) among the
nations physicians and hospitals are detailed in two new studies published today by
the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).
The studies, published in the journal Health Affairs, found that in 2013, almost
eight in ten (78 percent) office-based physicians reported they adopted
some type of EHR system. About half of all physicians (48 percent) had an EHR
system with advanced functionalities in 2013, a doubling of the adoption rate in
2009.
About 6 in 10 (59 percent) hospitals had adopted an EHR system with certain
advanced functionalities in 2013, quadruple the percentage for 2010. Unlike the
physician study, the hospital study does not have an equivalent, established
measure of adoption of some type of EHR system; it only reports on adoption of
EHRs with advanced functionalities.
Patients are seeing the benefits of health IT as a result of the significant
strides that have been made in the adoption and meaningful use of
electronic health records, said Karen DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., national coordinator
for health information technology. We look forward to working with our partners to
ensure that peoples digital health information follows them across the care
continuum so it will be there when it matters most.
The information in the studies was collected by the Centers for Disease Control and
Preventions National Center for Health Statistics and the American Hospital
Association in 2013.
These data provide an early baseline understanding of provider readiness to
achieve Stage 2 Meaningful Use of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive
programs. Stage 2 will begin later this year for providers who first attested to Stage
1 Meaningful Use in 2011 or 2012. About 75 percent of eligible professionals and
more than 91 percent of hospitals have adopted or demonstrated Stage 1
Meaningful Use of certified EHRs.
Adoption rates of EMRS are high in the status quo

Pettit 13 Lorren Pettit, holds an MBA in Business, Vice President of HIMSS, a
global, cause-based, not-for-profit organization focused on better health through
information technology, Market Researcher, 2013 (Pace of EMR Adoption During
the Past 5 Years, HIMSS, October 14, Available Online at
http://www.himss.org/News/NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=22845, Accessed
7/26/15)
A lot of attention over the past five years has been focused on the adoption of
electronic medical record (EMR) technologies in U.S. hospitals. The interest is
understandable given all the money the government is spending to incent providers
to use these technologies in a meaningful way, but the idea of EMR adoption in a
hospital is a little more complex than how it is typically presented in the press. For
one thing, there is no such thing as a singular EMR application. The EMR is a suite
of tools comprised of distinct applications. To really understand a hospitals EMR
adoption status, we need to understand the hospitals progression in building out an
EMR.
Fortunately, the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM) provides an eightstage framework for monitoring the development of a robust EMR system. First
introduced into the market in 2006, HIMSS Analytics has been monitoring, on a
quarterly basis, the array of hospitals amongst the various EMRAM stages. While it
is fairly common knowledge that the bulk of U.S. hospitals have been
progressively moving toward advanced EMRAM stages, the unknown
concerns the pace at which these organizations are moving.
HIMSS Analytics staff recently analyzed the quarterly EMRAM progression of 4,811
hospitals during the last five years (Q2 2008 and Q2 2013). As was expected, the
vast majority of all U.S. hospitals (73.7 percent) have advanced at least
EMRAM stage during this period. Not surprising as this observation aligns with
the shifting distribution the EMRAM profile discussed above. What we found most
interesting was that almost half of those organizations showing some
advancement reflected a fairly progressive adoption posture advancing by
two or three stages during this period, with another 20 percent assuming an
aggressive EMR adoption pace, advancing four or more stages in five years.
2NC/1NR Links/ILs
They Say: Doesnt Affect Health Care

Privacy restrictions on privately collected data hurt health care
effectiveness
Consequences.Although EMRs were invented in the 1970s, by 2005 only 41% of
U.S. hospitals had adopted a basic EMR system. Anecdotal evidence suggests that
privacy protection may partially explain this slow pace of diffusion. Expensive statemandated privacy filters may, for example, have played a role in the collapse of the
Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange in 2007.
Miller and Tucker (2009) examine the empirical consequences of privacy
regulation and, in particular, how it suppresses network effects in adoption of
medical information technology. Network effects may shape the adoption of
EMRs because hospitals derive network benefits from EMRs when they can
electronically exchange information about patient histories with other providers
such as general practitioners. Exchanging EMRs is quicker and more reliable than
exchanging paper records by fax, mail, or patient delivery. It is especially useful for
patients with chronic conditions when a new specialist requires access to previous
tests. Emergency room patients whose records (containing information about
previous conditions and allergies) are stored elsewhere also benefit.
EMRs key to better health care 4 warrants

Guerriere 15 Dr. Michael Guerriere, Chief Medical Officer and Vice-President,
Transformation Services at TELUS Health, 2015 (Four reasons you should care
about EMRs, TELUS, March 24, Available Online at http://blog.telus.com/telushealth/four-reasons-you-should-care-about-emrs/, Accessed 7/26/15)
Here are four reasons we as patients, healthcare providers and taxpayers should
care about, and advocate for, full EMR adoption in Canada.
1) Convenient, high quality healthcare
When all authorized caregivers can access your complete medical history anywhere,
anytime, it means less time repeating your medical history and pacing in waiting
rooms. It means more efficiency, better decisions and ultimately, healthier
outcomes.
2) Secure interactions
Unlike paper records, EMRs are not in danger of getting lost, damaged or destroyed.
Your health details are not only backed up, they are protected from theft and
tampering through the Canadian governments strict privacy regulations and
procedures.
3) Better management of our own health
Good EMRs will have portals that let patients contribute data like blood pressure
readings to their overall health picture. Through portals, patients take a much more
active role in health, collaborating with doctors to track the impact of treatments
and adjust behaviours to prevent disease. This is especially critical when
managing chronic disease.
4) Collaborative care
EMRs give the whole team doctors, specialists, pharmacists, technicians
complete and secure access to accurate and up-to-date information on your health.
Imagine!
They Say: Data Doesnt Solve

EMRs key to preventing short term and chronic disease and
saves over $10B
Hillestad et. al. 15 Richard Hillestad, policy expert RAND Corporation, holds
a Ph.D. in engineering and applied science and an M.S. and B.S. in electrical
engineering; James Bigelow, Associate Professor in the Department of
Pharmaceutical Sciences, holds a B.S. degree in Microbiology and Ph.D. in
Biochemistry; Anthony Bower, researcher at Synageva BioPharma with degrees in
Business Economics and Microeconomics; Federico Girosi, Associate Professor in
Population Health at the School of Medicine, holds a Ph.D. in Health Policy from
Harvard and a Ph.D. in Physics; Robin Meili, senior management systems analyst
and director of International Programs at the RAND Corporation, holds an M.B.A.
from NYU; Richard Scoville, Adjunct Associate Professor at UNC, holds a BA, MA in
Education, and a PhD in Psychology; Roger Taylor, holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc),
Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2015 (Can Electronic Medical Record Systems
Transform Health Care? Potential Health Benefits, Savings, And Costs, Health
Affairs, Available Online at http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/5/1103.full,
Accessed 7/22/15)
Using HIT for near-term chronic disease management.
The U.S. burden of chronic disease is extremely high and growing. In one study,
fifteen chronic conditions accounted for more than half of the growth in health care
spending between 1987 and 2000, and just five diseases accounted for 31 percent
of the increase.28 Disease management programs identify people with a potential
or active chronic disease; target services to them based on their level of risk (sicker
patients need more-tailored, more-intensive interventions, including case
management); monitor their condition; attempt to modify their behavior; and adjust
their therapy to prolong life, minimize complications, and reduce the need for costly
acute care interventions.
EMR systems can be instrumental throughout the disease management
process. Predictive-modeling algorithms can identify patients in need of services.
EMR systems can track the frequency of preventive services and remind physicians
to offer needed tests during patients visits. Condition-specific encounter templates
implemented in an EMR system can ensure consistent recording of disease-specific
clinical results, leading to better clinical decisions and outcomes. Connection to
national disease registries allows practices to compare their performance with that
of others. Electronic messaging offers a low-cost, efficient means of distributing
reminders to patients and responding to patients inquiries. Web-based patient
education can increase the patients knowledge of a disease and compliance with
protocols.
For higher-risk patients, case management systems help coordinate workflows,
including communication between multiple specialists and patients. In what may
prove to be a transformative innovation, remote monitoring systems can transmit
patients vital signs and other biodata directly from their homes to their providers,
allowing nurse case managers to respond quickly to incipient problems. Health

information exchange via RHINs or personal health records promises great
benefits for patients with multiple chronic illnesses, who receive care from
multiple providers in many settings.
We examined disease management programs for four conditions: asthma,
congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and
diabetes (Exhibit 4) and estimated the effects of 100 percent participation of
people eligible for each program.29 By controlling acute care episodes, these
programs greatly reduce hospital use at the cost of increased physician office visits
and use of prescription drugs. As shown, the programs could generate
potential annual savings of tens of billions of dollars. Keeping people out of
the hospital is, of course, a health benefit, but we can also expect important
outcomes such as reductions in days lost from school and work and in days spent
sick in bed.
Data driven healthcare is the critical factor in disease

prevention revolutionizes planning and treatment
Marr 15 Bernard Marr, contributor to Forbes, he also basically wrote the book
on internet data called Big Data and is a keynote speaker and consultant in
strategic performance, analytics, KPIs and big data, 2015 (How Big Data Is
Changing Healthcare, Forbes, April 21, Available Online at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/04/21/how-big-data-is-changinghealthcare/)
If you want to find out how Big Data is helping to make the world a better place,
theres no better example than the uses being found for it in healthcare. The last
decade has seen huge advances in the amount of data we routinely generate and collect in
pretty much everything we do, as well as our ability to use technology to analyze
and understand it. The intersection of these trends is what we call Big Data and it is helping
businesses in every industry to become more efficient and productive . Healthcare is no
different. Beyond improving profits and cutting down on wasted overhead, Big Data in healthcare is
being used to predict epidemics, cure disease, improve quality of life and avoid
preventable deaths. With the worlds population increasing and everyone living longer, models of
treatment delivery are rapidly changing, and many of the decisions behind those
changes are being driven by data. The drive now is to understand as much about
a patient as possible, as early in their life as possible hopefully picking up warning signs of
serious illness at an early enough stage that treatment is far more simple (and less expensive) than
if it had not been spotted until later. So to take a journey through Big Data in healthcare, lets start at the beginning
before we even get ill. Wearable blood pressure monitors send data to a smartphone app, then off to the doctor.
(Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Prevention is better than cure Smart phones were just
the start. With apps enabling them to be used as everything from pedometers to measure how far you walk in a
day, to calorie counters to help you plan your diet, millions of us are now using mobile technology to help us try and
live healthier lifestyles. More recently, a steady stream of dedicated wearable devices have emerged such as Fitbit,
Jawbone and Samsung Gear Fit that allow you to track your progress and upload your data to be compiled alongside
everyone elses. In the very near future, you could also be sharing this data with your doctor who will use it as part
of his or her diagnostic toolbox when you visit them with an ailment.
Even if theres nothing wrong with
you, access to huge, ever growing databases of information about the state of
the health of the general public will allow problems to be spotted before they
occur, and remedies either medicinal or educational to be prepared in advance This is
leading to ground breaking work, often by partnerships between medical and data
professionals, with the potential to peer into the future and identify problems
before they happen. One recently formed example of such a partnership is the Pittsburgh Health Data
Alliance which aims to take data from various sources (such as medical and insurance records, wearable sensors,
genetic data and even social media use) to draw a comprehensive picture of the patient as an individual, in order to
offer a tailored healthcare package. That persons data wont be treated in isolation. It will be compared and
analyzed alongside thousands of others, highlighting specific threats and issues through patterns that emerge
during the comparison. This enables sophisticated predictive modelling to take place a doctor will be able to
assess the likely result of whichever treatment he or she is considering prescribing, backed up by the data from
other patients with the same condition, genetic factors and lifestyle. Programs such as this are the industrys
attempt to tackle one of the biggest hurdles in the quest for data-driven healthcare: The medical industry collects a
huge amount of data but often it is siloed in archives controlled by different doctors surgeries, hospitals, clinics and
administrative departments. Another partnership that has just been announced is between Apple and IBM. The two
companies are collaborating on a big data health platform that will allow iPhone and Apple Watch users to share
data to IBMs Watson Health cloud healthcare analytics service. The aim is to discover new medical insights from
crunching real-time activity and biometric data from millions of potential users.
EMRs provide faster and more complete patient data analysis

and diagnosis
Wilson and Bock 12 John Wilson, MD, Vice President of Clinical Analytics,
OptumInsight, and Adam Bock, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer at Minneapolis
Veterans Hospital, 2012 (The benefit of using both claims data and electronic
medical record data in health care analysis, Optum, February, Available Online at
https://www.optum.com/content/dam/optum/resources/whitePapers/Benefits-ofusing-both-claims-and-EMR-data-in-HC-analysis-WhitePaper-ACS.pdf, Accessed
7/26/15)
More complete condition identification
There are a variety of reasons that physicians may fail to completely record on a
claim all the diagnoses from a visit. For one thing, physicians are constantly pressed
for time, and every second spent recording billing codes is a second that takes them
away from direct patient care. Additionally, in a fee-for-service setting, the payment
that a physician receives for an office visit is not directly related to the number or
type of conditions for which the physician codes (see Appendix A for more detail).
Hence, in many cases, the EMR will have a more complete set of diagnoses
for a given patient than claims data.
Because of this, claims data is often an imperfect reflection of the actual status of a
patient. Several studies support this.
One study examined how often people with the condition of chronic kidney disease
(CKD) had a claims-based diagnosis code for this condition over a one-year period.
In this study,3 results of a blood test (the estimated glomerular filtration rate or
eGFR) were used to determine whether or not kidney disease existed. If this test
was abnormal on at least two separate occasions over a year, the patients met the
definition CKD. The authors then examined all claims data for the patients who had
CKD diagnosed by virtue of lab testing. They found that only 2042 percent of these
patients had a diagnosis code for CKD on a claim over the one-year period. Put
another way, if one year of claims data was all that had been present, 5880
percent of people with CKD would not have been identified.
Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)4
showed that of children with EMR blood pressure values that were high on at least
three separate doctor visits, only 26 percent of them had a claim with a diagnosis of
hypertension on it.
In addition to showing the shortcomings of claims data in identifying conditions,
these data suggest another powerful conclusion: Use of clinical data from the
EMR can significantly improve condition identification. The use of lab result
data elements can support identification of people with CKD even without a coded
diagnosis. In addition, the use of vital sign data can allow identification of people
with hypertension despite the lack of a claim-based diagnosis of this condition.
In fact, there are a variety of data elements that might be available in the EMR
which, when analyzed, can allow the identification of a condition that was either not
recognized or not coded for by the physician. So, one way in which EMR data
enables better condition identification is by providing access to data elements (e.g.,
lab results and vital signs) that allow one to impute a diagnosiseven if that
diagnosis was never made.
Allowing for imputed diagnosis is just one way in which EMR data
improves condition identification over and above the use of claims data. The
EMR also has something which claims data do not: the concept of a problem list.
Claims data is, by its nature, temporally limited. Meaning the claim reflects only the
diagnoses and services that occurred on the date when the claim was submitted. It
is not designed to convey information about what happened in the past. So for a
patient who had heart surgery or an appendectomy two years ago, there is no
reason that those items will appear on a claim today. Similarly, if a patient had a
diagnosis of heart failure two years ago, that diagnosis may not appear on a claim
during a subsequent time period, even if the condition persists. The EMR, however,
has a way to transcend the concept of time by which claims data are constrained:
the problem list.
The problem list is an area in the electronic record where providers can keep track
of the list of medical problems affecting a patient. The EMR maintains this list
independently from any particular medical visit/encounter. Hence, use of the EMR
problem list allows identification of conditions which may not be identified via
claims data.
More timely
In addition to the ability of EMR data to enhance condition identification as
discussed above, EMR data has another advantage: timeliness. Sometimes we
would like to understand that a patient has experienced a certain event as soon as
that event has occurred. For example, we might like a nurse to provide a follow-up
call to a patient the day after an emergency room visit. If we are dependent on
claims data alone to identify the emergency room visit, there may be a delay
(sometimes of months) until a claim for this visit is received and processed.
However, providers interact with the EMR during (or soon after) the patient
encounter. Hence, EMR data is generated in real time, and a system which
evaluates data from the EMR can allow a much more rapid response.
Obamacare I/L
Explanation of this alternate internal link: EMRs fall under the
Obamacare act; given that Republicans hate Obamacare, they
will use the plans privacy restrictions to get rid of EMRs and
Obamacare.
EMRs are based in Obamacare
Hughes 15 Jane Lindell Hughes, M.D., F.A.C.S., Clinical Professor in the
Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Texas Health Science Center,
2015 (Obamacare: Why Washington wants your medical file, Washington Times,
February 11, Available Online at
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/11/electronic-medical-recordsgovernment-medicine-101/, Accessed 7/26/15)
Medicare and Medicaid have served as the template for Obamacare and
government-controlled medicine. This began with price controls on doctors and
hospitals resulting in cost-shifting to the private sector and spiraling health care
costs. Politicians used this predictable outcome to clamor for healthcare overhaul.
The crucial cost-control piece in the final implementation of Obamacare is
the centrally connected EMR database. It is to be the vehicle by which the
patients conditions are monitored and their treatment options elucidated based on
centrally determined best practices and factors such as age and pre-existing
pathology.
Physician compliance with recommended treatments will be monitored and
corrected when necessary. People the likes of Jonathan Gruber and Ezekiel
Emmanuel will be deciding these parameters as appointees to the Council for
Comparative Effectiveness Research and the Independent Payment Advisory Board
(IPAB).
Republicans hate Obamacare and will do anything to end it

Bouie 15 Jamelle Bouie, Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race,
2015 (Dead Letter Office, Slate, February 5, Available Online at
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/republicans_want_t
o_repeal_obamacare_the_gop_has_a_harder_time_replacing.html, Accessed 7/26/15)
To be an elected Republican in the age of Obamacare is to have a single, endless
mantra: Repeal and replace. Of the two parts, Republicans have had the
easiest time with repeal. Since winning the majority in 2010, House Republicans
have held 56 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with the latest attempt on
Tuesday, a courtesy for the new members who havent had a chance to voice their
ritual distaste for the law.
If youre feeling charitable, you can treat this focus on repeal as a consequence of
circumstances. House Republicans could have crafted a bill to replace Obamacare,
but then they would have had to make the compromises and pay the costs of
building an alternative without the benefit of bringing it to lawas soon as any bill
reached the Senate, Democrats would have killed it.
But now, Republicans have all of Congress. If they want to replace
Obamacare, they can. And on Wednesday, they took a step in that direction. With
little fanfare, Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Rep.
Fred Upton of Michigan unveiled their blueprint for Republican health reform. Called
the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, it is mostly
identical to an outline released last year by Hatch, Burr, and now-retired Sen. Tom
Coburn.
Republicans are pushing for privacy restrictions

Miller 14 Zeke J. Miller, 2014 (Exclusive: Republican Party Calls For End To
NSA Domestic Phone Records Program Time, January 24, Available Online at
http://time.com/2156/exclusive-republican-party-calls-for-investigation-into-nsasnooping/, Accessed 7/26/15)
In the latest indication of a growing libertarian wing of the GOP, the Republican
National Committee passed a resolution Friday calling for an investigation into the
gross infringement of Americans rights by National Security Agency
programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden.
The resolution also calls on Republican members of Congress to enact amendments
to the Section 215 law that currently allows the spy agency to collect records of
almost every domestic telephone call. The amendment should make clear that
blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence
electronic, physical, and otherwise of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited
by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a
public court, the resolution reads.
The measure, the Resolution to Renounce the National Security Agencys
Surveillance Program, passed by an overwhelming majority by voice vote,
along with resolutions calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance
Act and reaffirming the partys pro-life stance, according to Reince Priebus, the RNC
chairman.
Among other points, the resolution declares the mass collection and retention of
personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the
Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, a claim embraced by civil
libertarians of both parties.
2NC/1NR Impact
Disease Module
EMRs key to preventing disease increased research,
diagnosis and treatment capabilities
Exscribe 13 Exscribe Orthopaedic Healthcare Solutions, a team of
orthopedists and IT professionals to develop and address the unique needs of
Orthopaedic practices, 2013 (EMRs may help boost knowledge of DNA and
disease, Exscribe, December 31, Available Online at
http://www.exscribe.com/orthopedic-e-news/ehremr/emrs-may-help-boostknowledge-of-dna-and-disease, Accessed 7/26/15)
For decades researchers have been working to link DNA to certain diseases in order
to better prevent, diagnose and treat various medical issues. This has resulted in
many genome-wide association studies that have proven to be very informative, but
also have limitations. Recently, researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical
Center and four other U.S. institutions from the Electronic Medical Records and
Genomics Network discovered that EMRs may be able to help overcome these
limitations and allow scientists to learn even more about the connection
between DNA and disease.
The researchers used a combination of genetic data and electronic medical records
to conduct the first large-scale phenome-wide association study, known as PheWAS.
The scientists explained that while traditional genetic studies would start with one
phenotype and then examine one or several genotypes, this type of study does the
opposite by looking at a number of diseases for one genetic variant or genotype.
"This study broadly shows that we can take decades of off-the-shelf electronic
medical record data, link them to DNA, and quickly validate known associations
across hundreds of previous studies," said lead author Josh Denny, M.D., M.S.,
Vanderbilt associate professor of biomedical informatics and medicine. "And, at the
same time, we can discover many new associations. A third important finding is that
our method does not select any particular disease it is searches simultaneously for
more than a thousand diseases that bring one to the doctor. By doing this, we were
able to show some genes that are associated several diseases or traits,
while others are not."
Denny explained that this method will not be replacing traditional genetic research,
but it does offer a cost efficient way to examine many different diseases over time.
"PheWAS opens up important avenues in understanding why certain diseases can
present differently in different people, or how drugs might produce unpredicted
effects in some patients," said senior author Dan Roden, M.D., assistant vice
chancellor for Personalized Medicine, and principal investigator for the Vanderbilt
eMERGE site.
The New York Times spoke to Robert Green from Harvard Medical School, who
explained that this study has shown that EMRs could be a reliable source of
scientific information. This is particularly exciting considering that these systems
were not even designed with this purpose in mind, adding to the long list of benefits
of EMRs.
Moving forward with EMRs and DNA
Healthcare Informantics published an article explaining that precision medicine
the goal of which is to look into the molecular basis of disease using information
from people's DNA and linking it to information in their EMR is a growing field. The
news source spoke to Michael Blum, M.D., the leader of the new Center for Digital
Health Innovation at the University of California, San Francisco, who explained that
he believes that the key to advancing this type of medicine is to utilize the new
technology available in the health care industry to create a knowledge network and
information commons to link sources together.
EMRs can help diagnose diseases
Along with helping to connect DNA to certain diseases, EMRs have also been shown
to help doctors avoid making costly diagnostic errors. According to HealthIT.gov,
EMRs do not just contain patient information, they can also help compute it. This
means that they can present information in a way that will help doctors
better diagnose and treat patients. For example, whenever a doctor prescribes
a new medication to a patient and enters it into an EMR, the system will
automatically alert him or her if the new meds could interact negatively with a drug
the patient is currently taking.
New zoonotic diseases cause extinction different from past

diseases. Health care key to predict and check them
Quammen 12 award-winning science writer, long-time columnist for Outside
magazine, writer for National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New York
Times Book Review and others, 9/29/2012 (David, Could the next big animal-tohuman disease wipe us out?, The Guardian, pg. 29, Lexis)
Infectious disease is all around us. It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, along with predation and
competition. Predators are big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as viruses) are small
under ordinary
conditions, it's every bit as natural as what lions do to wildebeests and zebras. But conditions aren't
always ordinary. Just as predators have their accustomed prey, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally
beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful,
depart from its normal behaviour - to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, or a human instead of a zebra - so a pathogen can shift to a
new target.
Aberrations occur. When a pathogen leaps from an animal into a person, and succeeds in establishing
itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result is a zoonosis. It's a mildly technical term,
zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu,
bird flu, Sars, emerging diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic. It's
a word of the future, destined for

heavy use in the 21st century. Ebola and Marburg are zoonoses. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish
influenza of 1918-1919, which had its source in a wild aquatic bird and emerged to kill as many as 50 million people. All of the
human influenzas are zoonoses. As are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, rabies and a strange new
affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each of these zoonoses reflects the action of
pathogen that can "spillover", crossing into people from other animals . Aids is a disease of
zoonotic origin caused by a virus that, having reached humans through a few accidental events in western and central Africa, now
passes human-to-human. This form of interspecies leap is not rare; about 60% of all human infectious diseases currently known
either cross routinely or have recently crossed between other animals and us. Some of those - notably rabies - are familiar,
widespread and still horrendously lethal, killing humans by the thousands despite centuries of efforts at coping with their effects.
Zoonotic
pathogens can hide. The least conspicuous strategy is to lurk within what's called a reservoir host: a
Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims or a few hundred, and then disappearing for years.
living organism that carries the pathogen while suffering little or no illness. When a disease seems to disappear between outbreaks,
it's often still lingering nearby, within some reservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A butterfly? A bat? To reside undetected is probably
easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is relatively undisturbed. The converse is also true: ecological
disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree and things fall out. Michelle Barnes is an energetic, late 40s-ish woman, an
avid rock climber and cyclist. Her auburn hair, she told me cheerily, came from a bottle. It approximates the original colour, but the
original is gone. In 2008, her hair started falling out; the rest went grey "pretty much overnight". This was among the lesser effects
of a mystery illness that had nearly killed her during January that year, just after she'd returned from Uganda. Her story paralleled
the one Jaap Taal had told me about Astrid, with several key differences - the main one being that Michelle Barnes was still alive.
Michelle and her husband, Rick Taylor, had wanted to see mountain gorillas, too. Their guide had taken them through Maramagambo
Forest and into Python Cave. They, too, had to clamber across those slippery boulders. As a rock climber, Barnes said, she tends to
be very conscious of where she places her hands. No, she didn't touch any guano. No, she was not bumped by a bat. By late
afternoon they were back, watching the sunset. It was Christmas evening 2007. They arrived home on New Year's Day. On 4 January,
Barnes woke up feeling as if someone had driven a needle into her skull. She was achy all over, feverish. "And then, as the day went
on, I started developing a rash across my stomach." The rash spread. "Over the next 48 hours, I just went down really fast." By the
time Barnes turned up at a hospital in suburban Denver, she was dehydrated; her white blood count was imperceptible; her kidneys
and liver had begun shutting down. An infectious disease specialist, Dr Norman K Fujita, arranged for her to be tested for a range of
infections that might be contracted in Africa. All came back negative, including the test for Marburg. Gradually her body regained
strength and her organs began to recover. After 12 days, she left hospital, still weak and anaemic, still undiagnosed. In March she
saw Fujita on a follow-up visit and he had her serum tested again for Marburg. Again, negative. Three more months passed, and
Barnes, now grey-haired, lacking her old energy, suffering abdominal pain, unable to focus, got an email from a journalist she and
Taylor had met on the Uganda trip, who had just seen a news article. In the Netherlands, a woman had died of Marburg after a
Ugandan holiday during which she had visited a cave full of bats. Barnes spent the next 24 hours Googling every article on the case
she could find. Early the following Monday morning, she was back at Dr Fujita's door. He agreed to test her a third time for Marburg.
This time a lab technician crosschecked the third sample, and then the first sample. The new results went to Fujita, who called
Barnes: "You're now an honorary infectious disease doctor. You've self-diagnosed, and the Marburg test came back positive." The
Marburg virus had reappeared in Uganda in 2007. It was a small outbreak, affecting four miners, one of whom died, working at a site
called Kitaka Cave. But Joosten's death, and Barnes's diagnosis, implied a change in the potential scope of the situation. That local
Ugandans were dying of Marburg was a severe concern - sufficient to bring a response team of scientists in haste. But if tourists,
too, were involved, tripping in and out of some python-infested Marburg repository, unprotected, and then boarding their return
flights to other continents, the place was not just a peril for Ugandan miners and their families. It was also an international threat.
The first team of scientists had collected about 800 bats from Kitaka Cave for dissecting and sampling, and marked and released
more than 1,000, using beaded collars coded with a number. That team, including scientist Brian Amman, had found live Marburg
virus in five bats. Entering Python Cave after Joosten's death, another team of scientists, again including Amman, came across one
of the beaded collars they had placed on captured bats three months earlier and 30 miles away. "It confirmed my suspicions that
these bats are moving," Amman said - and moving not only through the forest but from one roosting site to another. Travel of
individual bats between far-flung roosts implied circumstances whereby Marburg virus might ultimately be transmitted all across
Africa, from one bat encampment to another. It voided the comforting assumption that this virus is strictly localised. And it
highlighted the complementary question: why don't outbreaks of Marburg virus disease happen more often? Marburg is only one
Sars, the scenario could

have been very much worse. Apart from the 2003 outbreak and the aftershock cases in early 2004, it hasn't
instance to which that question applies. Why not more Ebola? Why not more Sars? In the case of
recurred. . . so far. Eight thousand cases are relatively few for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several
factors contributed to limiting the scope and impact of the outbreak, of which humanity's good luck was only one. Another was the
speed and excellence of the laboratory diagnostics - finding the virus and identifying it. Still another was the brisk efficiency with
which cases were isolated, contacts were traced and quarantine measures were instituted, first in southern China, then in Hong
If the virus had arrived in a different sort of big city - more loosely
it might have burned through a
much larger segment of humanity. One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent in the way
Kong, Singapore, Hanoi and Toronto.
governed, full of poor people, lacking first-rate medical institutions -
Sars affects the human body: symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious.
That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. With
influenza and many other diseases, the order is reversed. That probably helped account for the scale of worldwide misery and death
1918-1919 influenza. And that infamous global pandemic occurred in the era before
globalisation. Everything nowadays moves around the planet faster, including viruses. When the Next Big
One comes, it will likely conform to the same perverse pattern as the 1918 influenza: high
infectivity preceding notable symptoms. That will help it move through cities and airports like
an angel of death. The Next Big One is a subject that disease scientists around the world often address. The most recent
during the
big one is Aids, of which the eventual total bigness cannot even be predicted - about 30 million deaths, 34 million living people
not every virus goes airborne from one host to another. If HIV-1
could, you and I might already be dead. If the rabies virus could, it would be the most
horrific pathogen on the planet. The influenzas are well adapted for airborne
transmission, which is why a new strain can circle the world within days. The Sars virus travels this route, too, or anyway by
infected, and with no end in sight. Fortunately,
the respiratory droplets of sneezes and coughs - hanging in the air of a hotel corridor, moving through the cabin of an aeroplane and that capacity, combined with its case fatality rate of almost 10%, is what made it so scary in 2003 to the people who
Human-to-human transmission is the crux. That capacity is what separates

a bizarre, awful, localised, intermittent and mysterious disease (such as Ebola) from a global pandemic. Have
understood it best.
you noticed the persistent, low-level buzz about avian influenza, the strain known as H5N1, among disease experts over the past 15
years? That's because avian flu worries them deeply, though it hasn't caused many human fatalities. Swine flu comes and goes
periodically in the human population (as it came and went during 2009), sometimes causing a bad pandemic and sometimes (as in
2009) not so bad as expected; but avian flu resides in a different category of menacing possibility. It worries the flu scientists
because they know that H5N1 influenza is extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality. As yet, there have been a relatively low
number of cases, and it is poorly transmissible, so far, from human to human. It'll kill you if you catch it, very likely, but you're
unlikely to catch it except by butchering an infected chicken. But if H5N1 mutates or reassembles itself in just the right way, if it
adapts for human-to-human transmission, it could become the biggest and fastest killer disease since 1918. It got to Egypt in 2006
and has been especially problematic for that country. As of August 2011, there were 151 confirmed cases, of which 52 were fatal.
That represents more than a quarter of all the world's known human cases of bird flu since H5N1 emerged in 1997. But here's a
critical fact: those unfortunate Egyptian patients all seem to have acquired the virus directly from birds. This indicates that the virus
hasn't yet found an efficient way to pass from one person to another. Two aspects of the situation are dangerous, according to
biologist Robert Webster. The first is that Egypt, given its recent political upheavals, may be unable to staunch an outbreak of
transmissible avian flu, if one occurs. His second concern is shared by influenza researchers and public health officials around the
globe: with all that mutating, with all that contact between people and their infected birds, the virus could hit upon a genetic
configuration making it highly transmissible among people. "As
Webster told me, "there
long as H5N1 is out there in the world ,"

is the possibility of disaster. . . There is the theoretical possibility that it can
No
other primate has ever weighed upon the planet to anything like the degree we do . In
ecological terms, we are almost paradoxical: large-bodied and long-lived but grotesquely abundant. We are an
outbreak. And here's the thing about outbreaks: they end . In some cases they end after
acquire the ability to transmit human-to-human." He paused. "And then God help us." We're unique in the history of mammals.
many years, in others they end rather soon. In some cases they end gradually, in others they end with a crash. In certain cases,
they end and recur and end again. Populations of tent caterpillars, for example, seem to rise steeply and fall sharply on a cycle of
anywhere from five to 11 years. The crash endings are dramatic, and for a long while they seemed mysterious. What could account
for such sudden and recurrent collapses? One possible factor is infectious disease, and viruses in particular.
Economy Module
EMRs facilitate cost-effective health care systems
Whitney and Wilkinson 9 Elisa Whitney, earned a PharmD degree at Lake
Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Julie J. Wilkinson, associate professor and
chair in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at LECOM, holds PharmD and BCPS
degrees, 2009 (Improving Patient Care with Access to EMRs, Pharmacy Times,
August 15, Available Online at
http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2009/august2009/techfeatureem
rs-0809#sthash.q2CauCgL.dpuf, Accessed 7/26/15)
The demand for health care services in the United States will increase in the coming
years because of the aging population. The majority of Americans aged 65 years or
older suffer from at least one chronic disease, which could be prevented with proper
changes in lifestyle or managed with appropriate drug therapy.4 About 75% of the
national health expenditure is on chronically ill patients.2 Unless chronic
diseases are well managed and preventive care measures become part of our daily
routine, the cost of health care will continue to rise. Better coordination and
communication across providers dealing with chronically ill patients and patients
seeking preventive care could yield a better health care delivery system.
EMRs could grant community pharmacists access to a patients diagnosis, lab
results, vital signs, allergies, treatment plans, desired treatment outcomes, clinical
progress notes, and social, health, and medication history. They could also provide
room for documenting counseling sessions, observations, assessments, and
recommendations, which can be instantaneously accessed by other authorized
health care providers. Because community pharmacists encounter multiple patients
daily, many of whom are regular, chronically ill visitors, they can use EMRs to more
effectively screen, monitor, and provide counseling sessions. Additionally, they can
provide appropriate recommendations to other health care providers.
Access to a patients social history could enable community pharmacists to practice
preventive care measures by helping formulate plans that meet patients specific
needs. For example, if a pharmacist wishes to provide smoking cessation counseling
sessions to a patient who has tried to quit several times, it is more likely that the
pharmacist will be successful if he is aware of previous difficulties or addiction
tendencies recorded by other health care providers during past encounters with the
same patient. The same could be said for pharmacists who wish to provide
counseling services for the prevention of hypoglycemia, diabetes, obesity, and
hypertension.
EMRs will facilitate the adoption and utilization of electronic prescribing
(eprescribing). This system is expected to improve the quality of patient care by
reducing handwriting based errors and by providing warnings and alerts at point of
prescribing. It will also provide prescribers with information about medications a
patient is already taking, including those prescribed by other health care providers.
This will help ensure that prescribers are aware of possible drugdrug and drug
allergy interactions, drug appropriateness, correct dosage, contraindications, and
duplications.5
It has been estimated that eprescribing could save $27 billion annually and
could prevent more than 2 million adverse drug events, from which more
than 130,000 are life-threatening. 6 This estimate does not take into
consideration the time that could be saved in community pharmacies by reducing
clarification callbacks to prescribers, paper based prescription drop offs, fax or
telephone refill requests, and interpretation of handwritten prescriptions. Freeing
pharmacists from these tasks could eventually result in better patient care quality
and reduced health care costs.
Health care costs kill the economy

Callahan 8 Daniel Callahan, cofounder and president emeritus of The Hastings
Center, holds a PhD, 2008 (Health Care Costs and Medical Technology, From Birth
to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for
Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns, Available Online at
http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/BriefingBook/Detail.aspx?id=2178,
Accessed 7/26/15)
Almost everyone knows that this country has a scandalously large number of people
who lack health insurance, now up to 46 million and growing. That number is vivid
and evocative. But it has overshadowed another, more serious issuethat of the
steady escalation of health care costs. Largely due to the use of medical
technology, those costs are now increasing at an annual rate of 7% a year.
The Medicare program as a consequence is projected to go bankrupt in nine
years, and overall health care cost to go from its present $2.1 trillion annually to $4
trillion in 10 years.
Those rising costs are an important reason why the number of uninsured keeps
going up. Business finds it harder and harder to pay for employee health benefits,
and only 61% of employers even provide them now (from a high a decade ago of
close to 70%); and the employers who do provide benefits are cutting them and
forcing employees to pay more themselves in the form of copayments and
deductibles. The 15% who are uninsured are surely faced with both health and
financial threats. But the cost problem now threatens everyone else as well,
including those using the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Yet even if most people are now aware of the dangers of cost escalation (and many
know it from personal experience), the problem has not gripped the imagination of
the public, the presidential candidates, or the media with the force of the uninsured
(even though recent public opinion polls indicate it is catching up). There are a
number of proposed and detailed schemes for universal care, but nothing
comparable for cost control, which is implicitly unpopular. Thats because cost
control will mean that just about everyone will be forced to give up something and
accept a different, more austere kind of health care.
Consider what serious cost control will require: moving from a 7% annual cost
growth down to 3%, which is an inflation of health care costs that is no greater than
that of the per annum rise in general inflation. That amounts to a cost reduction of
$1.5 trillion over the next decade, so that health care costs settle in at $2.5 trillion
in a decade. This would represent an enormous and unprecedented drop in
annual costs for a health care system that has never since World War II seen
anything more than a short, temporary decline from time to time.
Inflated health care costs kill the economy

Holland 13 Joshua Holland, senior digital producer and author of The Fifteen
Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything Else the Right Doesnt Want You to
Know about Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America), host of Politics and Reality Radio,
2013 (Rip-Off: How Private-Sector Health Costs Are Killing the American Dream,
Moyer, November 1, Available Online at http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/01/rip-offhow-private-sector-health-costs-are-killing-the-american-dream/, Accessed 7/26/15)
Part one of this series, The High Cost of Low Taxes, noted that while Americans
enjoy a tax burden lower than that of other wealthy countries, we also pay four
times as much as they do, on average, for out-of-pocket social costs in the
private sector on health care, retirement security, disability and unemployment
insurance, and the rest of the safety net. When you add up what we pay in taxes
and what we pay out of pocket, the US spends about the same amount on social
costs overall as some of the most generous, heavily taxed social democracies, but
we get a far less secure safety net in return.
The federal government doesnt have a deficit problem. Its fiscal issues are
entirely related to the bloated cost of American health care. If we paid the
same amount for health care per person as people do in other wealthy countries
with longer average life expectancies, wed have a balanced budget now and
surpluses projected for the future.
But those are just numbers on a spreadsheet. Fran and Randy Malott understand
those costs more viscerally. The Whittier, Calif., couple arent living the American
dream right now. They havent for a while. They were slammed when Wall Streets
house of cards came tumbling down, and now theyre feeling the squeeze of the
Great American Rip-off.
Fran lost her job as a customer service representative in 2009, at the height of the
Great Recession. A lot of companies are getting rid of customer service these
days, explains Randy. He lost his job managing a temp agency a year or so later.
The Malotts are two of what Paul Krugman called the forgotten millions the longterm unemployed who face unique barriers to reentering the workforce, including
discrimination by potential employers just because theyve been out of work for an
extended period. And our age doesnt help either, says Randy. Hes 59 and shes
60. There was unemployment for a while, Randy says, and now were getting by
on savings.
He tells Moyers & Company, we live pretty frugally, but the $1,600 a month
theyre forking over for health insurance represents about half their total spending.
The Malotts are a healthy couple, yet theyre watching their life savings drain away,
in large part due to their health insurance company. The $140,000 the Malotts had
socked away for retirement is now down to around $45,000. Weve got quite a
ways to go before Social Security and Medicare kick in, says Randy.
The Malotts are in a tough spot, like a lot of people who find themselves in similar
circumstances. Studies have shown that long-term unemployment causes stress
and illness. In the rest of the worlds highly developed countries, the Malotts health
care would be covered by their government the risk of long-term unemployment
would be spread across an entire society which means theyd have one less
serious stressor, and around $45,000 more in the bank than they do today.
When Competition Drives Up Costs
The US system is a stark testament to the fact that, at least when it comes to health
care, more competition doesnt lead to lower prices or better outcomes.
Three facts are indisputable. First, the $8,500 we spent per person on health
care in 2011 was around $5,000 more than the average among developed
countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
and almost $3,000 more than the average in Switzerland, which was the next
highest spender.
Second, multiple studies have found that we have significantly poorer health
outcomes than most developed countries (see here, and here) by some measures,
we rank dead last. And its not just because we have higher rates of poverty and
inequality a study conducted by the National Research Council and the Institute
for Medicine accounted for those factors and found that, as Grace Rubenstein
summarized for The Atlantic, even white, well-off Americans live sicker and die
sooner than similarly situated people elsewhere. (American men are also becoming
shorter relative to men in other highly developed countries the average height of
a population is a proxy for the quality of prenatal health care and nutrition.)
Finally, we rely much more heavily on the private sector to finance our health care
than any other wealthy country. Every developed state finances health care through
a mix of private and public spending, but the balance between private and public
health care in the US looks different from the rest of the wealthy world. Across the
OECD countries, governments pick up 72 percent of the tab for health care, but our
government finances just under 48 percent only the Chilean government covers a
smaller share (XL). (In the eight social democracies with the highest tax burdens in
the OECD Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Italy, France, Austria and Finland
79 percent of health costs are financed through the public sector.)
There are several reasons why our outsized reliance on the private sector ends up
costing us so dearly. The first is a simple matter of scale. In 2009, at the height of
the debate over Obamacare, economist Josh Bivens wrote that health care is an
area where the more costs are loaded up on the federal government, the more
efficiently care tends to be delivered overall. This is a big reason why costs in
Americas public health care programs, with their purchasing clout, have grown
more slowly than they have in the private sector.
When a single-payer system covers a vast pool of people, it has more bargaining
power to negotiate with providers. It needs significantly less administrative
overhead to figure out who will pay which bill (a question which is regularly
litigated). A 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that
three out of every 10 health care dollars spent in the US goes to
administrative costs rather than care.
US economy is still the lynchpin of the global economy most

recent evidence
Brett 15 Shane Brett, author of "The Future of Hedge Funds", founder of
"Global Perspectives", co-founder of "Gecko", received his Bachelor of Business
Studies (Hons), Accounting & Finance from Dundalk Institute of Technology, received
his MBA in Management Consulting from the University of Wales, has 19 years
experience in hedge fund /asset management operations, consultancy &
technology, including programme & product management at top fund managers &
administrators worldwide, 2015 (The Global Economy In 2015 - 5 Key Trends,
Seeking Alpha, January 11, Available Online at
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2811155-the-global-economy-in-2015-5-key-trends,
Accessed 7/16/15)
The US economy created 7,000 jobs per day in 2014 and this remarkable rate of
employment growth is set to escalate in 2015.
The perceived decline of American power has been greatly exaggerated.
Commentators confuse the current US unwillingness to wield hard power, for a lack
of underlying real power. They also confuse deadlock in Washington with the
underlying dynamism of many US regions and States.
The US still controls the global economy, all the world's oceans, its trade
routes and its reserve currency. It spends nearly as much on defence as the rest
of the world put together. This will not change anytime soon.
In 2015, the US will continue to be the global engine for growth, enterprise and
innovation, as it has been for most of the last century.
This should not be surprising. The English-speakers (i.e. the USA/UK) have run the
world for 3 centuries now. They have consistently defeated all challengers to world
hegemony that have appeared over this time (Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser
Wilhelm II, Hitler, Stalin etc.).
Despite the chorus of BRIC hysteria over the last few years, the economic growth in
these countries has taken place because they adopted US policies of trade
liberalization, economic freedom and a free market. In 2015, they will endure
a major emerging market crisis. Their power will not surpass the US for decades (if
ever).
Global economic decline causes nuclear war

Auslin 9 Michael Auslin, Resident Scholar American Enterprise Institute, and
Desmond Lachman Resident Fellow American Enterprise Institute, 2009 (The
Global Economy Unravels, Forbes, 3-6, Available Online at
http://www.aei.org/article/100187)
What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression
showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere
fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make
responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know
what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the
adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent
decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing
concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported
that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent
years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn
poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The
regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or
diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia,
an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its
Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated
on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain
falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing
threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable
societies face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict.
As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's
prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of
thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are
being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the
end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter
of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece,
workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously
increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer
Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades.
Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of
Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The
xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of Europe. A
prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise
tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation
in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the
globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are
doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang.
Economic decline risks global nuclear conflicts studies

confirm.
Ferguson 9 Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard
University, 2009 (The Axis of Upheaval, Foreign Policy, February 16 th, Available
Online at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/02/16/the_axis_of_upheaval)
The Bush years have of course revealed the perils of drawing facile parallels
between the challenges of the present day and the great catastrophes of the 20th
century. Nevertheless, there is reason to fear that the biggest financial crisis since
the Great Depression could have comparable consequences for the international
system. For more than a decade, I pondered the question of why the 20th century
was characterized by so much brutal upheaval. I pored over primary and secondary
literature. I wrote more than 800 pages on the subject. And ultimately I concluded,
in The War of the World, that three factors made the location and timing of lethal
organized violence more or less predictable in the last century. The first factor was
ethnic disintegration: Violence was worst in areas of mounting ethnic tension. The
second factor was economic volatility: The greater the magnitude of economic
shocks, the more likely conflict was. And the third factor was empires in decline:
When structures of imperial rule crumbled, battles for political power were most
bloody. In at least one of the worlds regionsthe greater Middle Easttwo of these
three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there
for decades, and following the difficulties and disappointments in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasiimperial presence in the region. It likely still will. Now the third variable, economic
volatility, has returned with a vengeance. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernankes Great Moderationthe supposed decline of economic volatility that he
hailed in a 2004 lecturehas been obliterated by a financial chain reaction,
beginning in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, spreading through the banking
system, reaching into the shadow system of credit based on securitization, and
now triggering collapses in asset prices and economic activity around the world.
After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, the global economy will almost
certainly sputter along in 2009, though probably not as much as it did in the early
1930s, because governments worldwide are frantically trying to repress this new
depression. But no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there
will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a
painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical
consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming
upheaval. In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalias endless
anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russias new brand of aggression, and Sam
Quinones explores Mexicos drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three
case studies out of a possible nine or more. In Gaza, Israel has engaged in a bloody
effort to weaken Hamas. But whatever was achieved militarily must be set against
the damage Israel did to its international image by killing innocent civilians that
Hamas fighters use as human shields. Perhaps more importantly, social and
economic conditions in Gaza, which were already bad enough, are now abysmal.
This situation is hardly likely to strengthen the forces of moderation among
Palestinians. Worst of all, events in Gaza have fanned the flames of Islamist
radicalism throughout the regionnot least in Egypt. From Cairo to Riyadh,

governments will now think twice before committing themselves to any new Middle
East peace initiative. Iran, meanwhile, continues to support both Hamas and its
Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons
program that Israelis legitimately see as a threat to their very existence. No one can
say for sure what will happen next within Tehrans complex political system, but it is
likely that the radical faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be
strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically, however, Iran is in a
hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks
disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even a purely Israeli air
offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of
conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But with presidential
elections in June, Ahmadinejad has little incentive to be moderate. On Irans eastern
border, in Afghanistan, upheaval remains the disorder of the day. Fresh from the
success of the surge in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of U.S. Central
Command, is now grappling with the much more difficult problem of pacifying
Afghanistan. The task is made especially difficult by the anarchy that prevails in
neighboring Pakistan. India, meanwhile, accuses some in Pakistan of having had a
hand in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of last November, spurring yet another South
Asian war scare. Remember: The sabers they are rattling have nuclear tips. The
democratic governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere.
Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break
down amid escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial
role. Pakistans small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the
collapse of the countrys stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the
countrys huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is
not a recipe for political stability. This club is anything but exclusive. Candidate
members include Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey, where there are already signs
that the economic crisis is exacerbating domestic political conflicts. And let us not
forget the plague of piracy in Somalia, the renewed civil war in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the continuing violence in Sudans Darfur region, and the
heart of darkness that is Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. The axis of
upheaval has many members. And its a fairly safe bet that the roster will grow
even longer this year. The problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are
looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis
and paying little attention to the wider world crisis. This is true even of the United
States, which is now so preoccupied with its own economic problems that
countering global upheaval looks like an expensive luxury. With the U.S. rate of GDP
growth set to contract between 2 and 3 percentage points this year, and with the
official unemployment rate likely to approach 10 percent, all attention in
Washington will remain focused on a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Caution
has been thrown to the wind by both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The
projected deficit for 2009 is already soaring above the trillion-dollar mark, more
than 8 percent of GDP. Few commentators are asking what all this means for U.S.
foreign policy. The answer is obvious: The resources available for policing the world
are certain to be reduced for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if
foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the
United States or simply begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies.
Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline : That
combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age
of upheaval starts now
Decline magnifies the severity of other conflicts WWII proves

Miller 8 G. Robert M. Miller, journalist for Digital Journal, 2008 (Guns vs.
Shovels The Central Question Behind Our Next Economy, Digital Journal, October
25, Available Online at http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/261595)
But before we look at the modern Guns versus Butter model, it first has to be
noted that this phrase was originally popularized in a time where securing economic
prosperity was a primary concern in nearly every nation. More importantly, when
these nations did experience economic collapse, nearly all of them chose Guns.
There is no question that Nazi aggression spawned World War II, however, what was
happening in Europe became a world war for a purpose as central to the heart of
the capitalist as was the instantaneous end of the holocaust to the heart of the
compassionate; economic prosperity. Simply said, big wars are big money; and to
truly break from the embrace of the Great Depression, a big commitment to the
economy was necessary. And due to the leadership that guided the balance
between Guns and Butter in the US through World War II, the economy was
considerably improved; this was true for many western nations.
Economic decline cause nuclear war

Bearden 2k Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000 (The Unnecessary
Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, Yahoo, Available Online at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big- Medicine/message/642)
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a
catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As the collapse of
the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160
developing nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail
orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that desperate
nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on
nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point
where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some
25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving
North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S.
forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In
addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will
quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic
nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions,
once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then
compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real
legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never
discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all,
is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived
foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to
full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being
unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it,
and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
Aff Answers
EMRs are Inefficient/Expensive

EMRs are inefficient and hurt health care systems
Hensley 14 Scott Hensley, Assistant Professor at the Wistar Institute, holds a
PhD in biology from UPenn, 2014 (Electronic Medical Records, Built For Efficiency,
Often Backfire, National Public Radio, November 7, Available Online at
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/07/361148976/electronic-medicalrecords-built-for-efficiency-often-backfire, Accessed 7/26/15)
Electronic medical records were supposed to usher in the future of medicine.
Prescriptions would be beamed to the pharmacy. A doctor could call up patients'
medical histories anywhere, anytime. Nurses and doctors could easily find patients'
old lab results or last X-rays to see what how they're doing. The computer system
could warn doctors about dangerous drug combinations before it was too late.
Many of those things are an everyday reality in doctors' offices and hospitals across
the country. But a survey of more than 400 internists with experience using
electronic medical records, or EMRs, documents what doctors have complained
about for years: computerized records chew up a lot of time.
Writing up a patient's visit on the computer can take more time than you might
expect. More than 60 percent of the doctors surveyed said that note writing took
longer using computerized records than before they were implemented.
One reason: There are all kinds of boxes to check that have more to do with the
billing department than the patient.
Overall, the survey found that attending physicians, the doctors in charge of care,
lost an average of 48 minutes a day because of EMRs. Doctors in training lost 18
minutes a day.
EMR implementation is time consuming, ineffective, and

wasteful spending
Denning 13 Steve Denning, Program Director of Knowledge Management at
the World Bank, studied law and psychology at Sydney University, worked as a
lawyer in Sydney for several years, holds a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford,
2013 (Why Is Your Doctor Typing? Electronic Medical Records Run Amok, Forbes,
April 25, Available Online at Why Is Your Doctor Typing? Electronic Medical Records
Run Amok, Accessed 7/26/15)
In the last year or two, theres been a shift. Much of my time with doctors has
been spent watching them type. In one case, the doctor tapped away on his
laptop, occasionally looking up to ask questions before returning to the main focus
of his attention: his computer. In another case, the doctor intermittently tapped on
an iPad while we spoke. In a third instance, the doctor had a conversation with me
and then apologized that he would be spending the next half of our session typing
up the results of our conversation. All this typing was required, he said, if he was
ever going to be reimbursed for his services. It was getting in the way of being a
doctor.
Surely, I said, computerized medical records generate benefits. They are easily
retrievable. They can be transferred from one practice to another and accessible to
the many different service providershospitals, laboratories, specialists, radiology
and so onthat might be involved in any one patient.
In theory, perhaps, he replied. But in practice, its a horrible and costly
bureaucracy that is being imposed on doctors. I spend less time with patients,
and more time filling out multiple boxes on forms that dont fit the way I work. Often
I am filling out the same information over and over again. A lot of it is checking
boxes, rather than understanding what this patient really needs.
What about retrieving information? Isnt that easier?
Again, in theory, retrieval should be easy and quick, he said, But you cant flip
through these records the way you do with a paper file and easily find what you
want. The other day, for instance, I inherited a new patient along with her electronic
records. Her previous care-givers had checked forty-five boxes of problems. Theres
no way that I can deal with a patient with forty-five problems. She and I
talked for some time and eventually we figured out that she had six real health
problems: then we could begin to discuss what to do. And then I had to input that
discussion into the computer. The electronic record didnt save time. It made
everything take longer.
But at least now you can get the records electronically?
Sometimes, he said. But each network has its own system and often the systems
are incompatible. The systems dont talk to each other. So transferring records
from one system to another becomes another nightmare.
But why do you type while the patient is there?
Filling out these forms and checking all the boxes takes me a lot of time, he said,
If I dont do it now, I will spend half the night trying to remember the discussion
and typing up the results of the days visits. The outcome is that I have less time to
spend with patients. Instead of making the system better, its making
everything more costly.
What we are seeing here is the implementation of Obamacarethe
Affordable Care Actwhich has provided reimbursement incentives and an
electronic medical records deadline for those who adopt electronic medical records
(EMR). However, for those who dont meet the electronic medical records deadline
for implementation, the government has laid out a series of penalties. The
message to doctors is clear: implement electronic records or pay a price.
The government already is wasting billions on the medical EMR, my
doctor told me. They are committed to giving each health care system $17,000 per
doctor who is successfully using electronic medical records to help them cover their
software investment. This money goes to the health care system and not the docs.
So its basically a very lucrative pass through to the software people for
generating an inadequate and burdensome system.
Survey: most doctors lose money with electronic records
My doctor is not alone in seeing problems with the way that electronic medical
records are being implemented.
A recent survey published in Health Affairs by Julia Adler-Milstein, Carol Green and
David W. Bates, estimates that doctors who install electronic medical records
systems should expect an initial loss of around $44,000 on their
investment. Almost two-thirds of the practices using electronic records would lose
money even with government subsidies, the researchers said.
Having electronic records is in principle a good idea, but only if one imagines
implementation as quick and intuitive so that its easier for doctors to input and
retrieve information rather than from scribbling notes on paper. Reformers imagine
some kind of well-tuned iPhone or iPad with lots of cool gadgets and apps that make
life easier.
But in practice, implementation of electronic health records today is
anything but quick and intuitive or easy to use. Its mostly like old-style formfilling software that is an aggravating pain to use. It takes forever, involves
continuous repetition, is counter-intuitive to use and offers few benefits in return.
Along with upfront costs, doctors said they have to work longer hours because of
the software. Smaller offices, those with five doctors or fewer, struggled the most.
The study shows that 27 percent of practices are projected to gain by seeing more
patients or getting more claims approved by insurers, though there is no indication
what happened to the quality of care in such accelerated throughput.
Implementing electronic records is expensive and difficult to

use
Despite the theoretical potential for quality improvement from computerized
records, they found that few physician practices use electronic records. Miller and
Sim argue that the path to quality improvement and financial benefits lies in
getting the greatest number of physicians to use the electronic medical records
[EMR] (and not paper) for as many of their daily tasks as possible. The key
obstacle in this path to quality is the extra time it takes physicians to

learn to use the EMR effectively for their daily tasks.
Miller and Sim report:
Interviewees reported that most physicians using EMRs spent more time per
patient for a period of months or even years after EMR implementation. The
increased time costs resulted in longer workdays or fewer patients seen,
or both, during that initial period Even highly regarded, industry-leading EMRs to
be challenging to use because of the multiplicity of screens, options, and
navigational aids Although vendors are slowly improving EMR usability, most
vendor interviewees doubted that any silver bullet technology (for example, voice
recognition, tablet computers, or mobile computing) will dramatically simplify EMR
usage. Designing easy-to-use software for knowledge workers is a challenge that
spans the software industry beyond health care.
Miller and Sim suggest policy interventions to overcome these barriers, including
providing work/practice support systems, improving electronic clinical data
exchange, and providing financial incentives for quality improvement.
This thinking is fanciful. Paying people to work unintelligently doesnt work and
ultimately will be ineffective. What is needed are systems that actually help doctors
do their work.
The world didnt need incentives or support systems to get people to adopt iPhones
or iPads. We embraced the iPhones and iPads because they are easy to use and
they made our lives better.
When the software embedded in electronic records isnt adapted to the doctors
needs and the way they work, hopes of major productivity gains through
policy fixes like incentives or training are doomed.
EMRs Dont Work

EMRs dont improve data sharing
Creswell 14 Julie Creswell, reporter at the New York Times, JD from University
of Iowa, 2014 (Doctors Find Barriers to Sharing Digital Medical Records, New York
Times, September 30, Available Online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/business/digital-medical-records-becomecommon-but-sharing-remains-challenging.html?_r=0, Accessed 7/26/15)
Regardless of who is at fault, doctors and hospital executives across the country say
they are distressed that the expensive electronic health record systems they
installed in the hopes of reducing costs and improving the coordination of patient
care a major goal of the Affordable Care Act simply do not share
information with competing systems.
The issue is especially critical now as many hospitals and doctors scramble to
install the latest versions of their digital record systems to demonstrate to
regulators starting Wednesday that they can share some patient data. Those who
cannot will face reductions in Medicare reimbursements down the road.
On top of that, leading companies in the industry are preparing to bid on a Defense
Department contract valued at an estimated $11 billion. A primary requirement is
that the winning vendor must be able to share information, allowing the department
to digitally track the medical care of 9.6 million beneficiaries around the globe.
The contract is the latest boon to an industry that taxpayers have heavily
subsidized in recent years with over $24 billion in incentive payments to help install
electronic health records in hospitals and physicians offices.
While most providers have installed some kind of electronic record system, two
recent studies have found that fewer than half of the nations hospitals can transmit
a patient care document, while only 14 percent of physicians can exchange
patient data with outside hospitals or other providers.
Weve spent half a million dollars on an electronic health record system
about three years ago, and Im faxing all day long. I cant send anything
electronically over it, said Dr. William L. Rich III, a member of a nine-person
ophthalmology practice in Northern Virginia and medical director of health policy for
the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Alt Cause
Alt cause to healthcare industry bureaucratization and bad
management
As Brown points out, the biggest challenge in enterprise software delivery
lies not in these software practices themselves, but rather in the overall
management culture. If the organization remains in a vertical, hierarchical mode,
with an approach of heres the systemimplement it, none of the advantages of
computerization will accrue. In fact, costs will increase.
The problem is that hierarchical bureaucracy is still pervasive in the health
sector. Producing easy-to-use software or the agility to make continuous
adjustments from experience lies beyond the performance envelope of this type of
management.
A radically different kind of management is needed. It needs to begin, not with a
goal of introducing electronic medical records, but rather with the goal of
improving the working lives of doctors through better technology.
Instead of producing outputs in the form of electronic records, the goal needs to be
generating positive outcomes for doctors. Once outcomes for doctors are positive,
the need for incentives vanishes: doctors will want to improve their working lives.
There will be stampede to use the new technology.
But this entails a revolution in management thinking. Instead of seeing electronic
records as merely a shift in technology from paper to IT, it involves a transformation
in the way the health sector thinks about and manages work. It means new goals,
new roles for managers, new ways of coordinating work, new values and new ways
of communicating.
Fortunately, there is a vast experience in thousands of organizations around the
world for over a decade to show the way. Its still the best kept secret in the
management world.
We need to stop torturing doctors with systems that make work more
difficult and generate systems that are betterbetter for doctors, better for
patients and better for the health system overall. And for that to happen, we need
a different kind of management.

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Google DA

adverse consequences should be set against the benefits of simplicity and

Data collection is key to enhanced Google revenues and

Google Self-Driving cars are key to revitalizing the economy,

building blocks of driverless cars are on the road

The first big leap to fully

Googles goal is to increase car

These vehicles should practice

If the autonomous cars are shared vehicles

if only 10% of the cars on U.S.

that a fleet of 9,000 driverless taxis could

will take decades, but

Oil dependence diminishes US hegemony key to combating

Because of their oil wealth, these and other

the European Union, are more reluctant to

These new realignments have further diminished U.S. leverage , particularly in

such arrangements are spreading. These arrangements are worrisome because

States that are politically unstable and poorly

Totalitarian governments that have control over those

a significant interruption in oil supply will have adverse political and

The activities of Iran today and Iraq,

the conventional force of the United States deters

the U.S. military posture with its capacity to

They Say: Regulations Key

Consequences.However, such regulation will impose costs. As set out by Evans

Google Revenue High

Googles revenue is at a record high

Googles revenue is on an upward spiral sustainable growth

However, things took a dramatic turn when Google

Google is in the midst of a

Google dissipated a lot of concerns when it announced financial results for

Google is being more disciplined when it

more Google searches are taking place on mobile devices than on

they have information stored about your Mobile network as

Googles Privacy Policy Googles Privacy Policy states that everyones

Having this amazing collection of

Google is not going

more about you than you think.

They Say: Regulations Dont Hurt

Google has to bring more

Google should clarify if this information can be provided only to

A call to reform US government surveillance

They Say: Data Not Key to Google

They Say: No Spillover

Privacy protections from the government spillover into the

Privacy restrictions on governments shift the debate to

Distrust toward government surveillance leads to distrust toward the

Since intelligence agencies rely on private companies for the

They Say: Privacy Violations are Intrusive

Increasing Privacy Protections will result in decreased

users can opt in for Google's "Web History" service for

users with Google accounts

Data are available both to the user

Users of search engines essentially face a tradeoff

this statement does not rule out the

Google attributes much of

They Say: Private Sector Bad

to advance genomics research by providing scientists with the data

Government agencies and nonprofits, which often lack the

The group now analyzes satellite

By analyzing the content of Facebook posts, UN workers have begun to

They Say: No Adoption

Revenue Internal Link

Advertising generates the vast majority of