When you hear the phrase "property rights," you probably think of farmers fighting environmental regulators and homeowners arguing with oil drillers. But in the Information Age, you should also be thinking about your computer — and asking, how much of you is really yours? It's not a navel-gazing rumination from a college Intro to Existentialism class — it's an increasingly pressing question in the brave new world of social networking and cloud computing.

Last week's big technology announcement spotlighted the thorny issue. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Google's announcement of its "Google Drive" came with the promise that users will "retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content." But when you save files to Google's new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google "a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute (your) content" as the company sees fit.i

When asked about this, Google argued that its provisions merely "enable us to give you the services you want - so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can."

As reassuring as that seems, though, it's not that simple when considered in a larger context.

In the last few years, major technology companies have become integral to interpersonal communication and information management. At the same time, many of these firms have tweaked user agreements in exactly the way Google has, helping the industry legally position itself for a mass intellectual property grab. That means whether you are using a photo-sharing site or a web-based email account, you may have signed off on letting one of these corporations do whatever it wants with your data.

As ...

As it heads toward a House vote, critics say the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would allow private internet companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, effectively legalizing a secret domestic surveillance program already run by the NSA. Backers say the measure is needed to help private firms crackdown on foreign entities — including the Chinese and Russian governments — committing online economic espionage. The bill has faced widespread opposition from online privacy advocates and even the Obama administration, which has threatened a veto. We speak with Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A legislative battle has erupted on Capitol Hill over a controversial House bill that critics say would allow private internet companies to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency and other agencies. In a letter on Monday, 18 Democratic House members warned that unless specific limitations were put in place, the bill, quote, "would, for the first time, grant non-civilian federal agencies, such as the National Security Agency, unfettered access to information about Americans’ internet activities and allow those agencies to use that information for virtually any purpose." The bill is titled the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or simply CISPA.

Backers of the legislation say it is needed to help private companies crack down on foreign entities—including the Chinese and Russian governments—committing online economic espionage that is stealing trade secrets from U.S. ...

But in which language does one speak to a machine, and what can be expected by way of response? The questions arise from the accelerating data-streams out of which we’ve learned to draw the breath of life, posed in consultation with the equipment that scans the flesh and tracks the spirit, cues the ATM, the GPS, and the EKG, arranges the assignations on Match.com and the high-frequency trades at Goldman Sachs, catalogs the pornography and drives the car, tells us how and when and where to connect the dots and thus recognize ourselves as human beings.

Why then does it come to pass that the more data we collect -- from Google, YouTube, and Facebook -- the less likely we are to know what it means?

The conundrum is in line with the late Marshall McLuhan’s noticing 50 years ago the presence of “an acoustic world,” one with “no continuity, no homogeneity, no connections, no stasis,” a new “information environment of which humanity has no experience whatever.” He published Understanding Media in 1964, proceeding from the premise that “we become what we behold,” that “we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Media were to be understood as “make-happen agents” rather than as “make-aware agents,” not as art or philosophy but as systems comparable to roads and waterfalls and sewers. Content follows form; new means of communication give rise to new structures of feeling and thought.

To account for the transference of the idioms of print to those of the electronic media, McLuhan examined two technological revolutions that overturned the epistemological status quo. First, in the mid-fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type, which deconstructed the illuminated wisdom preserved on manuscript in monasteries, encouraged people to organize their perceptions of the world along the straight lines of the ...

One of the items that Congress added to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Obama’s stimulus package, was a first-time homebuyer tax credit. The tax credit gave people buying their first home, or who had not been homeowners for at least three years, a tax credit equal to 10 percent of the purchase price of the home, up to $8,000. The intention was to spur home buying and put an end to the plunge in home prices, which were dropping at an annual rate of close to 20 percent at the time. According to the Government Accountability Office, 2.3 million people took advantage of the credit, at a cost to the government of $16.2 billion.

This delayed the deflation of the bubble, but did not stop it. By the end of 2011, nationwide home prices had fallen by 8.4 percent since the credit-induced peak reached in the second quarter of 2010. They are continuing to fall into 2012. The temporary boost to the market from the credit allowed many homeowners to sell their homes at prices that were still partially inflated by the bubble. This was good for these homeowners, as well as their creditors, who might have otherwise been forced to accept short sales. However, it was bad news for homebuyers who were persuaded to buy homes at prices that were often still above trend values

This paper briefly outlines the impact of the homebuyer credit. The first part produces a set of calculations of the amount of wealth transferred to sellers and creditors as a result of the credit. These calculations are intended to determine the additional ...

Just because SOPA and PIPA, the infamous internet "kill switch" bills, are largely dead does not mean the threat to internet free speech has become any less serious. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is the latest mutation of these internet censorship and spying bills to hit the U.S. Congress -- and unless the American people speak up now to stop it, CISPA could lead to far worse repercussions for online free speech than SOPA or PIPA ever would have.

CNET, the popular technology news website that was among many others who spoke up against SOPA and PIPA earlier in the year, is also one of many now sounding the alarm about CISPA, which was authored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.). Though the bill's promoters are marketing it as being nothing like SOPA or PIPA, CISPA is exactly like those bills, except worse.

What CISPA will do, if passed, is remove all the legal barriers that currently stop internet service providers, government agencies, and others from arbitrarily spying on internet users. In the name of "cybersecurity," a term that is undefined in the bill, CISPA will essentially allow internet users to be surveilled by the government without probable cause or a search warrant, which is a clear violation of users' constitutional civil liberties.

Additionally, it will allow websites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to intercept emails, text messages, and other private information that might be considered a threat to "cybersecurity." The government can then demand access to this information, even if it has nothing to do with copyright infringement, which is one of the excuses being used for why such a bill is needed in the first place.

Internet users are already required to abide by the same laws as everyone else

"Just because ...

Social Security remains the most important source of income for most Americans in their retirement. Nonetheless, there are many proposals for cutting benefits that get serious consideration, including increasing the normal retirement age. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research examines the impact of raising the Social Security retirement age and its effect on the distribution of wealth from loss of future Social Security benefits.

“The full retirement age for Social Security is already scheduled to increase to 67 over the next 10 years,” said Dean Baker, a co-director of CEPR and an author of the report. “Despite the fact that each year of increase in the normal retirement age is equal to a cut in benefits of 6 to 7 percent, some policy makers are calling for raising the retirement age as high as 70.”

The report, “The Impact on Inequality of Raising the Social Security Retirement Age,” projects the impact of a gradual increase of the normal retirement age on various demographic groups, looking at each quintile of the wealth distribution, as well as the richest 1 percent. The paper also contains separate projections for homeowners and non-homeowners, single individuals and couples in several age cohorts. These projections demonstrate that Social Security wealth is a much larger share of wealth for the bottom four of the five groups. As a result, an increase in the retirement age would cause an increase in inequality.

“Since those in the top income quintile have vastly more wealth than those in other quintiles, a loss of 7 percent of Social Security benefits will not ...

On March 1 Google and Cape Air announced that Cape Air would be migrating its Passenger (PNR) to a new computerized reservation system (CRS) developed by Google’s ITA Software division.  In combination with Google’s controversial new privacy policy, this move could set a potentially dangerous standard for what kinds of information US Customs and Border Protections (CBP) and US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) may access in determining the fly or no-fly status of travelers.

While most have never seen their PNRs, it is an important assemblage of data that determines whether or not a passenger is permitted to fly.  Each individual has his or her own PNR, which are stored with millions of other passengers in CRSs. Governmental agencies then have access to these files and place restrictions on those passengers they deem to be a credible threat to national security.

Google has also made headlines recently regarding its new privacy policy, which Consumer is a blatant misnomer, and actually describes the new invasive ways Google wants to gather information about individuals Internet usage.  Many of these techniques include methods for circumventing the privacy policies of Internet browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari, which is used on iPhones and iPads around the country.  This information will then be stored in virtually permanent digital dossiers so that Google may target ads based on individuals’ personal information.  Contrary to its name, this new privacy agreement essentially outlines Google’s “spy” policy.

These two issues, on their own, should be enough to concern any person who uses the Internet.  However, these two issues combined should raise serious questions about what kind of information Google ...

Overall unemployment has ticked down slightly from the peaks of the recession, but long-term unemployment remains historically high, threatening the long-term economic security of workers and the country as a whole. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research sheds light on the demographics of the millions of workers struggling with unemployment and under-employment.

 “Long-term Hardship in the Labor Market” breaks out workers considered long-term unemployed by the official BLS standard according to race and gender, education, and age. The authors also expand the conventional concept of long-term unemployment and capture further dimensions of long-term hardship including discouraged workers, workers marginally attached to the workforce, and workers who are part-time for economic reasons.

The report shows that under the standard measure of long-term unemployment, half of all unemployed black men have been jobless for more six months or longer, followed closely by roughly 49 percent of unemployed Asian men, black ...

At the General Assembly meeting last night, Occupy Wall Street’s dreamer contingent got a very special valentine: the GA endorsed the Direct Action Working Group’s proposal to call for a general strike on May Day—May 1, 2012. Occupiers celebrated with cheers and Valentine’s Day balloons.

The text approved by the GA is as follows:

May Day 2012 Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99%, a general strike and more!! On May Day, wherever you are, we are calling for: *No Work *No School *No Housework *No Shopping *No Banking TAKE THE STREETS!!!!!

The prospect of an Occupy general strike has been circulating for a while already. One of the several Facebook event pages devoted to it has more than 10,000 attendees. Occupy Los Angeles began calling for a May 1 general strike as early as last November, and Occupy Oakland joined