Shortly after September 11, 2001, the United States began requesting additional financial information about persons of interest by subpoenaing records located at the SWIFT banking consortium. SWIFT, which routes trillions of dollars a day, faced an ethical dilemma: fight the subpoenas in order to protect member privacy and the group's reputation for the highest level of confidentiality, or, comply and provide information about thousands of financial communications in the hope that lives will be saved. SWIFT decided to comply in secret, but in late June 2006, four major U.S. newspapers disclosed SWIFT's compliance. This sparked a heated public debate over the ethics of SWIFT's decision to reveal ostensibly confidential financial communications.

Analyzing the situation in hindsight, three ethical justifications existed for not complying with the Treasury Department's requests. First, SWIFT needed to uphold its long-standing values of confidentiality, non-disclosure, and institutional trust. The second ethical reason against SWIFT's involvement came with inadequate government oversight as the Treasury Department failed to construct necessary safeguards to ensure the privacy of the data. Third, international law must be upheld and one could argue quite strongly that the government's use of data breached some parts of international law.

Although SWIFT executives undoubtedly considered the aforementioned reasons for rejecting the government's subpoena, three ethical justifications for complying existed. First, it could be argued that the program was legal because the United States government possesses the authority to subpoena records stored within its territory and SWIFT maintained many of its records in Virginia. Second, it is entirely possible that complying with the government's subpoena thwarted another catastrophic terrorist attack that would have cost lives and dollars. Third, cooperating with the government did not explicitly violate any SWIFT policies due to the presence of a valid subpoena. However, the extent of cooperation certainly surprised many financial institutions and sparked some outrage and debate within the financial community.

While SWIFT had compelling arguments both for agreeing and refusing to cooperate with the U.S. government program, even in hindsight, it is impossible to judge with certitude the wisdom and ethics of SWIFT's decision to cooperate as we still lack answers to important questions such as: what information did the government want? What promises did the government make about data confidentially? What, if any, potentially impending threats did the government present to justify its need for data?

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A) No clear cut answer as to the legality of SWIFT's cooperation existed
B) SWIFT failed to adequately consult its legal staff before deciding to cooperate
C) The volume of money routed through SWIFT declined after its cooperation became public
D) U.S. authorities threatened criminal charges if SWIFT refused their subpoenas
E) Treasury Department officials objected to the publication of information about its classified program

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

1. The complex and somewhat ambiguous issue of the legality of SWIFT's cooperation can be inferred by the fact that legal reasons exist both for cooperating and for not cooperating. For cooperating: "it could be argued that the program was legal because the United States government possesses the authority to subpoena records stored within its territory and SWIFT maintained many of its records in Virginia" For not cooperating: "international law must be upheld and one could argue quite strongly that the government's use of data breached some parts of international law"
2. The passage enables us to infer the contrary by implying that SWIFT considered the legal implications of not cooperating ("SWIFT executives undoubtedly considered the aforementioned reasons [one being legal] for rejecting the government's subpoena").
3. The passage never discusses the volume of money (only the number of transactions). Moreover, there is no comparison of money or transactions before and after SWIFT's decision became public.
4. There is no information in the passage that allows anything close to this inference. The passage never mentions threats or government efforts to force SWIFT to comply.
5. Although this did in fact occur, there is no information in the passage that allows anything close to this inference.
 

Marketing executives in television work with a relatively stable advertising medium. In many ways, the television ads aired today are similar to those aired two decades ago. Most television ads still feature actors, still run 30 or 60 seconds, and still show a product. However, the differing dynamics of the Internet pose unique challenges to advertisers, forcing them to adapt their practices and techniques on a regular basis.

In the early days of Internet marketing, online advertisers employed banner and pop-up ads to attract customers. These techniques reached large audiences, generated many sales leads, and came at a low cost. However, a small number of Internet users began to consider these advertising techniques intrusive and annoying. Yet because marketing strategies relying heavily on banners and pop-ups produced results, companies invested growing amounts of money into purchasing these ad types in hopes of capturing market share in the burgeoning online economy. As consumers became more sophisticated, frustration with these online advertising techniques grew. Independent programmers began to develop tools that blocked banner and pop-up ads. The popularity of these tools exploded when the search engine Google, at the time an increasingly popular website fighting to solidify its place on the Internet with giants Microsoft and Yahoo, offered free software enabling users to block pop-up ads. The backlash against banner ads grew as new web browsers provided users the ability to block image-based ads such as banner ads. Although banner and pop-up ads still exist, they are far less prominent than during the early days of the Internet.

A major development in online marketing came with the introduction of pay-per-click ads. Unlike banner or pop-up ads, which originally required companies to pay every time a website visitor saw an ad, pay-per-click ads allowed companies to pay only when an interested potential customer clicked on an ad. More importantly, however, these ads circumvented the pop-up and banner blockers. As a result of these advantages and the incredible growth in the use of search engines, which provide excellent venues for pay-per-click advertising, companies began turning to pay-per-click marketing in droves. However, as with the banner and pop-up ads that preceded them, pay-per-click ads came with their drawbacks. When companies began pouring billions of dollars into this emerging medium, online advertising specialists started to notice the presence of what would later be called click fraud: representatives of a company with no interest in the product advertised by a competitor click on the competitor's ads simply to increase the marketing cost of the competitor. Click fraud grew so rapidly that marketers sought to diversify their online positions away from pay-per-click marketing through new mediums.

Although pay-per-click advertising remains a common and effective advertising tool, marketers adapted yet again to the changing dynamics of the Internet by adopting new techniques such as pay-per-performance advertising, search engine optimization, and affiliate marketing. As the pace of the Internet's evolution increases, it seems all the more likely that advertising successfully on the Internet will require a strategy that shuns constancy and embraces change.

According to the passage, which of the following best describes the practice of click fraud?

A) Clicking on the banner advertisements of rival companies
B) Using software to block advertisements
C) Utilizing search engine optimization to visit the pages of competitors
D) Fraudulently purchasing products online
E) Clicking on the pay-per-click ads of competitors

Correct Answer: E

Explanation: The pertinent sentence from the passage is: "pay-per-click ads came with their drawbacks. When companies began pouring billions of dollars into this emerging medium, online advertising specialists started to notice the presence of what would later be called “click fraud”: representatives of a company with no interest in the product a competitor advertised clicked on the competitor's ads simply to increase the marketing cost of the competitor."

   1. Click-fraud pertains to pay-per-click advertising, not banner advertising.
   2. This answer describes pop-up blockers, not click fraud.
   3. Click-fraud pertains to pay-per-click advertising, not search engine optimization.
   4. There is no mention in the article of this practice.
   5. This matches the description of click-fraud in the passage.
 

Use the following answer choices for the questions below.

   1. Statement 1 alone is sufficient but statement 2 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
   2. Statement 2 alone is sufficient but statement 1 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
   3. Both statements 1 and 2 together are sufficient to answer the question but neither statement is sufficient alone.
   4. Each statement alone is sufficient to answer the question.
   5. Statements 1 and 2 are not sufficient to answer the question asked and additional data is needed to answer the statements.

Which company reported the larger dollar increase in earnings?

   1. Company A reported that its earnings increased by 5%.
   2. Company B reported that its earnings increased by 7%.

Correct Answer: E

Explanation: The question can not be answered with the statements provided. The question asks which company's earnings increased by more dollars, not which company's earnings increased by a greater percentage. The different percentage rates of increase tell us nothing about either company's actual (dollar) increase in sales unless we know each firm's starting baseline.

Use the following answer choices for the questions below.

   1. Statement 1 alone is sufficient but statement 2 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
   2. Statement 2 alone is sufficient but statement 1 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
   3. Both statements 1 and 2 together are sufficient to answer the question but neither statement is sufficient alone.
   4. Each statement alone is sufficient to answer the question.
   5. Statements 1 and 2 are not sufficient to answer the question asked and additional data is needed to answer the statements.

What is the value of y?

1. y - 3 = 2
2. y² = 25

Correct Answer: A

Explanation: Statement 1 is sufficient to determine that x equals 5. Statement 2 only tells us that x could be +5 or -5.