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The purpose of this study is to explore and theorize on the motivations of a new class of whistleblowers or leakers stemming from the “abusive” cybersecurity practices of Western governments. This research primarily focuses on such practices of the US Government.

This work is designed as a case study research of cybersecurity whistleblowers or leakers on Western governments, involving data collection from primary and secondary sources. The method is a content analysis to determine the presence of certain themes within this primary and secondary data which this research can then make inferences about the messages within the texts.

The findings show a formation of a recent class of power brokers, with its own collective ethos, who will be known by a new term: the “New Knowledge Cyberclass” (NKC). The development of the NKC was revealed through the shocking data revelations by Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. What separates the NKC from government “protectors” (i.e. President Obama, Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo), who argue that these leakers stole and leaked classified documents that endangered lives, is their definitions of what it means to be defenders of democracy, which here pertains to the rights to citizens’ online privacy and the degree of secrecy in US Government.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study directed toward connecting, Snowden, Assange and Manning, to the birth of a new class of power brokers designed to directly challenge Western government malpractices with citizens’ online privacy and secrecy in foreign operations. This research explores both the birth of this new class and a collective ethos that binds this group together despite the tensions and conflicts within this new class.

The authors contrast Beckett and Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) baseball card valuations. Also, the authors contrast the Bill James statistics for winshares (WIN) and reference.com statistics for wins above replacement (WAR).

This study examines the impact of analytics on Topps 1957 baseball card values.

The authors' examination of variables that influence Topps 1957 baseball card values yields similar results for mint and very good rated cards over the early period (1982), pre-strike (1989), post-strike (1998) and recent (2009) periods. In single variable and multiple regressions, Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) membership and New York Yankee (NYY) nostalgia coefficient are significant at the 5% level or higher for mint and very good rated cards over all reported periods. The Brooklyn Dodger (BD) parameter is significant at the 5% level or higher in single variable regressions for all reported periods and for 1982 and 1989 for multiple regressions. Reflecting a lack of nostalgia, the New York Giant card coefficients are statistically insignificant over all periods. Also, the authors see a lack of negative bias for Black-player cards. The authors observe that Black-player card coefficients are positive and sometimes statistically significant. This indicates a positive relationship between Black-player cards and prices.

This is the first study to examine the impact of WINS and WAR analytics on baseball card values.