AP CSA 4.1 Exercise 2: Ethical and Social Issues Around Data Collection Applied Practice
Unit 4: Data Collections · Lesson 4.1 · Exercise 2
Ethical and Social Issues Around Data Collection: Applied Practice
Six scenarios on what a program is allowed to collect, what a data set silently encodes, and why a correct algorithm can still produce an unjust result.
Back to the Lesson 4.1 pageAll Unit 4 lessons
How this one is different
This is the one Unit 4 topic with no code to write, which makes it the one students skip. The exam asks about it anyway, and always as judgement about a specific situation rather than a definition.
Applied Practice
6 questions · scenario driven · every answer is recorded for your teacher
Question 1 of 6Evaluate
A school app stores every student's name, PIN, home address and date of birth so it can "personalize greetings" on the dashboard.
What is the strongest objection to this design?
Incorrect. The value of the feature is not the issue. A useful feature still does not justify unnecessary collection.
Incorrect. The storage structure is irrelevant to whether the data should be collected at all.
Incorrect. True but trivial. Storage is cheap; the objection is about risk, not size.
Correct. Correct. This is data minimization: collect only what the stated purpose actually needs, because everything held is something that can leak.
Question 2 of 6Analyze
A resume-screening program is trained on ten years of a company's past hiring decisions, and those past decisions favored one group. The code contains no reference to any protected characteristic.
Can this program still produce biased results?
Incorrect. The program can be entirely bug free and still be unjust. Correctness and fairness are different properties.
Incorrect. Omitting the field does not remove the pattern. Other fields correlate with it, and the target itself carries the history.
Correct. Correct. Bias enters through the data, not only through the code. This is the single most tested idea in this topic.
Incorrect. Intent is not required. Most algorithmic bias is inherited rather than authored.
Question 3 of 6Apply
A student wants to publish a class project that scrapes and republishes photographs from classmates' public social media profiles.
Which consideration matters most before publishing?
Incorrect. Efficiency has no bearing on whether the republication is permitted.
Correct. Correct. Accessibility is not permission. Consent and licensing are separate from technical reachability.
Incorrect. The file format is irrelevant to the permission question.
Incorrect. The grade is not a justification for republishing someone else's images.
Question 4 of 6Analyze
A fitness app collects step counts to show users their weekly totals, then later sells the same data to an insurance company.
What principle does the later sale violate even though the collection itself was disclosed?
Correct. Correct. Consent is scoped to a purpose. Reusing data for an undisclosed purpose is a fresh decision that needs fresh consent.
Incorrect. Encryption protects data in transit and at rest. It does nothing about an authorized party choosing to sell it.
Incorrect. Agreeing to collection for one purpose is not agreement to every possible later use.
Incorrect. The volume collected was appropriate for the feature. The problem is the second use.
Question 5 of 6Evaluate
A city deploys a pothole-reporting app and repairs streets in order of how many reports each receives. Reports come only through smartphones.
Why might this produce an inequitable repair schedule?
Incorrect. Measurement difficulty is real but is not what makes this schedule inequitable.
Incorrect. The data structure has nothing to do with the fairness of the result.
Incorrect. Sorting speed does not change which reports exist to be sorted.
Correct. Correct. The data set measures who reports, not where the potholes are. Sampling bias makes a faithful algorithm produce an unfair outcome.
Question 6 of 6Apply
A developer must decide how long to keep server logs that contain user IP addresses.
Which policy best reflects responsible data handling?
Incorrect. Renaming a file is not a security measure. The contents are unchanged and equally readable.
Incorrect. "Might be useful later" is exactly the reasoning that turns a log into a liability. Indefinite retention maximizes exposure.
Correct. Correct. Retention limits pair a real operational need against the standing risk of holding identifying data.
Incorrect. An overcorrection. Responsible handling balances need against risk rather than eliminating capability.
Where to go next
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