Martin S. Feldstein:

Without a program to stop mortgage defaults, there is no way to know how much further house prices might fall.

John Bird and John Fortune:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

The Economist's Washington correspondent:

I thought I was unlucky graduating into the tech bust. I had no idea.

Judith Warner:

We're all losers now. There's no pleasure to it.

How to Stop the Drop in Home Values

Bruce Schneier, on Daniel Solove's new book:

The debate will never be the same after this book.

Straw Man:

Money for me, databases for you.

Jack Balkin:

Privacy is a crucial social value that must be integrated into our national security policy rather than simply balanced against it.

Daniel Solove:

The law frequently fixes on the wrong questions, such as whether privacy should be protected rather than how it should be protected. Privacy often can be protected without undue cost to security.

We can reach a better balance between privacy and security. We must. There is too much at stake to fail.

The debate between privacy and security has been framed incorrectly as a zero-sum game in which we are forced to choose between one value and the other. Why can't we have both?

Eric Schmidt:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Freeman Dyson:

You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security

Howard Schmidt:

Today, I am proud to announce the United States' first, comprehensive International Strategy for Cyberspace. The International Strategy is a historic policy document for the 21st Century -- one that explains, for audiences at home and abroad, what the U.S. stands for internationally in cyberspace, and how we plan to build prosperity, enhance security, and safeguard openness in our increasingly networked world.

With our partners around the world, we will work to create a future for cyberspace that builds prosperity, enhances security, and safeguards openness in our networked world. This is the future we seek, and we invite all nations, and peoples, to join us in that effort.

Declan McCullagh, in January:

Howard Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet.

Nick Bilton, last month:

The Internet never forgets.

Eric Schmidt:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Margaret Talbot:

The unobserved life is so totally worth living.

Launching the U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace | The White House

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

My National Security Letter Gag Order

Newsweek profiles Francis Fukuyama.

As the communist era vanished, he declared history's end. With the Middle East in revolt and China rising, Francis Fukuyama is back. What is he thinking?

The Origins of Political Order

A drug court program that we believe is run differently from every other drug court in the country, doing some things that are contrary to the very philosophy of drug court. The result? People with offenses that would get minimal or no sentences elsewhere sometimes end up in the system five to ten years.

Very Tough Love | This American Life

Noteworthy:

Like-minded people must form groups and work together to find the most effective way to express their sentiments.

Votizen:

Our approach is simple: we authenticate your existing Facebook, Twitter and email accounts as belonging to a registered voter, and we help match you with other voters who share your views. We then automatically connect you with your specific elected officials, who pay particular attention since they know the opinions are from actual voting constituents.

Stanley Fish:

To be political is to believe something, and to believe something is to believe that those who believe something else are wrong, and after all you don't want people who believe (and would do) the wrong things running your government. So you organize with other like-minded folks and smite the enemy (verbally) hip and thigh. You join a party.

Economist:

Americans are increasingly choosing to live among like-minded neighbours. This makes the culture war more bitter and politics harder.

John C. Dvorak:

The public continues to read about what they already know. And they hang out only with like-minded people. There are huge cadres of people who are practically duplicates of each other. They all think alike, dress alike, and go to the same group-approved places.

Conan O'Brien:

[In the future,] Super-TiVos will arrange marriages between like-minded viewers and will persuade mismatched couples to throw in the towel and start seeing other people.

Nova Spivack:

Twine is a new [now defunct] service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people.

Scott Sassa:

The notion of having like-minded people provide you with a trusted referral is a really powerful marketing concept.

Vint Cerf:

The Internet is for everyone ... I hope Internauts everywhere will join with the Internet Society and like-minded organizations to achieve this, easily stated but hard to attain goal.

Homer:

Can't someone else do it?

Decius:

I said I'd do something about this, and I am.

Votizen

Colleen A. Reilly:

Digital spaces on the World Wide Web can be consumed as windowed technologies, providing apparently transparent access to information, or as mirrors, multi-layered and complex, requiring critical reflexivity for productive participation. Approaching Wikipedia as a mirrored technology exploits its potential as a pedagogical tool with which students can improve their research practices and writing proficiency in digital environments. Students can learn to grapple with Wikipedia as a complex, living discourse community, whose rhetorical practices and technical conventions they must learn in order to make contributions to it that are accepted by fellow editors of the site and withstand its unique editorial processes. By writing for Wikipedia, students become critical users of this digital resource, develop rhetorical and technological proficiency, and generate texts that prompt real-world response and provide potentially useful information for fellow users of this massive digital resource.

Can Wiki Voter Guide help teachers to build lesson plans around the development and curation of relevant content on local elections?

Decius:

I said I'd do something about this, and I am.

Teaching Wikipedia as a mirrored technology | First Monday

Following the first election since the Supreme Court has struck down limits on election-related advertising, a new poll finds that 9 in 10 voters said that in the 2010 election they encountered information they believed was misleading or false, with 56% saying this occurred frequently. Fifty-four percent said that it had been more frequent than usual, while just three percent said it was less frequent than usual, according to the poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, based at the University of Maryland, and Knowledge Networks.

Equally significant, the poll found strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the key issues of the campaign. Such misinformation was correlated with how people voted and their exposure to various news sources.

Wendy Kaminer:

I wish the issues were vetted ... but I think they're not, because voters don't have the time, or the energy, or the information.

Decius:

I said I'd do something about this, and I am.

Voters Say Election Full of Misleading and False Information

Kevin Bankston:

In a landmark decision issued in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

Jeremy Pelofsky:

Officers will start random bag inspections on the sprawling Washington subway system, the Washington Metro Transit Police said on Thursday, a week after a man was arrested for making bomb threats to the rail system.

Metrorail police officers plan to randomly select bags before passengers enter subway stations and they will swab them or have an explosives-sniffing dog check the bags, according to the Metro police.

There is "no specific or credible threat to the system at this time," Metro said in a statement. Passengers who refuse to have their bags inspected will be denied entry into the subway system.

Decius:

What you tell Google you've told the government.

Eric Schmidt:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment | Electronic Frontier Foundation