It's the empty houses, stupid.

In case anyone has forgotten the core of the current economic crisis, here's a reminder: empty homes, both present and future. Empty homes are behind all the supposedly worthless mortgage-backed securities that no one wants to buy on Wall Street. Fear of the coming avalanche of empty homes -- what the Center for Responsible Lending calls the "tsunami of foreclosures" -- has made Wall Street's mortgage-related paper nearly worthless.

It seems that filling those empty homes by dealing with foreclosures and stoking demand to buy homes should be the first order of business. So why -- as we discuss the most dramatic government intervention in nearly a century -- is there only passing mention of all these vacancies?

By every industry measure, foreclosure is a huge problem. Earlier this year, the financial services giant Credit Suisse estimated that there will be 6.5 million U.S. foreclosures during the next five years.

And even if you pay your mortgage on time, foreclosures will likely hurt you, too. Each time a family is kicked out of a home, there's collateral damage to the value of nearby homes. The Center for Responsible Lending says that the closest 50 homes lose an average of $3,000 in equity every time there's a foreclosure. The organization estimates that 40 million families will lose nearly $350 billion in equity due to foreclosure collateral damage during the next five years.

The bleak outlook was published in April, which should make you wonder why Congress only became interested two weeks ago and then started acting with incredible haste. The crisis has been brewing for some time.

There are really two related but distinct economic crises facing America right now. There's the liquidity crisis on Wall Street, which has us all breathlessly watching CNBC, and there's the housing crisis, which is kicking 6,000 families per day out of their homes and is draining equity from the rest of the nation's homeowners.

The liquidity crisis has superseded all other concerns in recent days, even the presidential campaign. Wall Street's advocates, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, generated enough panic that Congress appears willing to sign a check for $700 billion. For a while, those advocating for Main Street held out for a quid pro quo – immediate help with the housing market crisis -- but the resistance lasted less than a week.

'A game of chicken'

"This was kind of a game of chicken and I'm afraid it looks like the consumer advocates in Congress are the ones who blinked ," said Adam J. Levitin, a bankruptcy expert at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Details of the not-quite-completed-bailout-plan are still emerging, but by all accounts it will not include the most obvious and direct tool to stem the empty house problem: adjustments to bankruptcy law that would allow judges to modify the mortgages of at-risk homeowners.

Such assistance could still materialize in Congress, but the Senate voted to reject the idea in April, spurred on by agressive bank lobbying. By agreeing to this bailout deal without fixing bankruptcy law, Main Street's advocates have surrendered nearly all their leverage.

I understand the theory that giving banks more money to lend can ultimately help restart demand for housing by making it easier for consumers to get loans and, as demand increases, boosting housing prices. But isn't that how we got here in the first place?

The proposal to help at-risk homeowners was simple: allow bankruptcy judges to rework loans (essentially, lower the mortgage principal and payments) to keep them in their homes and out of foreclosure. Sadly, supporters of the plan surrendered and instead focused on CEO pay -- a populist issue that's a distraction from the real problem of empty homes.

Critic sees bailout as 'unfair and ineffective'

"The only way to stop the free-fall of housing prices is to stop foreclosures," Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the Center For Responsible Lending, warned. "If you don't do something for consumers, this is going to be unfair and ineffective."

The proposal to amend Chapter 13 bankruptcy law (the kind where debtors repay their loans, but buy time and get some discounts) is hardly revolutionary. Under Chapter 13, filers can rework all kinds of loans: car loans, vacation home loans, investment/rental property loans. But primary residence loans are exempt. Struggling homeowners face two choices in current bankruptcy law -- pay every penny or walk away. The limitation stems from a 1970s law that was intended to encourage banks to lend more money to would-be homeowners.

The simplest way to prevent the coming avalanche of additional empty homes -- and thereby make those asset-backed-securities have some real value -- is to prevent people from getting kicked out. It's stunning that $700 billion is about to change hands with no direct plan for keeping them in their homes.

There is the HOPE NOW alliance, set up by Congress this year to encourage at-risk homeowners and banks to renegotiate mortgages voluntarily. By all measures, it's been a failure. Banks aren't answering their phones when consumers call; trusts that service mortgages have perverse incentives in place that make foreclosure more profitable than renegotiated loans.

Allowing modification of home loans in bankruptcy would encourage banks to negotiate new terms, as it would allow the banks to avoid court costs and delays. Once bankruptcy courts set a few price points on modified loans, voluntary participation would likely follow.

The financial industry, which has long resisted modifying Chapter 13 bankruptcy, says that such a change would deal the mortgage-backed securities industry a body blow. Allowing judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage -- lenders call this a "cramdown" -- would lower the overall value of mortgage instruments, as a built-in bankruptcy discount would have to be applied, which would, in turn, harm consumers by restricting the flow of credit, banks say.

No sign of 'bankruptcy premium'

But Georgetown's Levitin published a study last month that indicates that other loan markets are not adversely impacted by bankruptcy modification. There's no difference in mortgage rates between primary residence loans and vacation residence homes, for example – and there would be if there were a "bankruptcy premium," he said.

Levitin argues that proposed Chapter 13 bankruptcy changes would in fact be "market neutral." Bankruptcy judges are well trained in determining consumers' ability to repay a loan, meaning many banks would get 50, 60, or 70 cents on the dollar, up to twice as much as they would realize after going through the costly foreclosure process, he said.

And neighbors would certainly agree that such a home loan modification would be preferable to another empty home.

"The contagion began on Main Street, and it has to be fixed there," said Day, from the Center for Responsible Lending. "You are not going to get at the root of this and really restore the economy until you stop all the foreclosures."

Other empty home proposals

Even with the bankruptcy option, not all homeowners would be able to stay in their houses, and there are already millions of empty homes.

To address that problem, David Colander, a professor of economics at Middlebury College, has another idea. He wants part of the $700 billion bailout to go directly to U.S. consumers in the form of housing vouchers. The vouchers could be used to pay off loans, or even better, to persuade some renters to jump into the homeownership market. Nothing greases the housing market quicker than turning renters into owners, he said, calling it a "trickle-up policy."

"Unlike a tax cut, or a temporary stimulus fiscal package, this plan would have a directed effect on the housing market and hence on the mortgage backed securities market," he said.

If carried out in conjunction with a bailout of financial institutions, it would raise the value of securities purchased by the government because home values would rise as demand increases, Colander said.
To ensure the plan maximizes the purchase of primary residences -- as opposed to investment -- the vouchers would be income-based, under his plan.

Of course, such direct intervention into a market -- giving consumers free money -- contradicts long-standing free-market policies. But then, so does having the federal government purchase $700 billion in bad loans.

When a college student who has just run out of money and maxed out her credit card gets that bailout from dad, what's the first thing she does? Throw a party, of course.

And so it is on Wall Street. The federal government just slapped its plastic on the table and said, "Put it on my credit card."

Banks, you see, recently cried "Uncle," and our money has been volunteered to save them. To no one's surprise, that means you and I are now going to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in small increments over several decades to backstop the excesses of the banking industry. My questions are: Will we at least get frequent flier miles and will they be worth anything?

Remember, this is the same industry that would show no mercy to a depositor who dipped 78 cents into the red when buying a hamburger with a debit card. The same banks that routinely charge $35 in fees to lend the shopper that 78 cents. I assure you, we will not get the same kind of return on our largesse.

And I don't want it. What I want is something much more valuable: In exchange for our money, I want the banking industry to behave. I want a sense of fairness and honor to return to the marketplace, and I want the industry to freely accept new rules, regulations and to learn a little restraint. A little humility would help, too.

Here's what will happen as part of the Treasury Department bailout plan. No one is going to knock on your door and say, "OK, drop $5,000 in this hat please." We're just swiping that national credit card now and we'll pay later. As with credit card purchases, we won't really feel this immediately. We're not going to trade in a national park or a few fighter jets. Instead, we'll just print more money. That's because the federal government can quite literally print all the money it wants. The consequences of that are not immediate, but they are real. Higher debt means a higher "minimum balance payment," so there's less to spend maintaining that park, dilution of the value of the dollar, perhaps ultimately inflation and less value to your savings and bonds.

But that's probably a fair price to pay to stop the crazed unwinding of Wall Street and its entangling alliances—a trend that has been accelerating over the past 10 days. It's time to take all the bad mortgages and all the bad bankers and give them all one big national enema so we can start over.

What about all those bonuses?
There are some issues where silence is disturbing, however. Recall that many, many charlatans made sickening amounts of money by pushing the financial crack of bad loans around America over the past decade. For brokers, the commission checks were huge. On Wall Street, the annual bonuses were big enough to pay for new homes in the Hamptons. But no one, so far, has asked for the return of that money. These folks knew how to game the system, and they knew as long as they grabbed the money and ran, they'd get away with it. They have.

As many have suggested, we've nationalized risk but privatized profit. We've taken the two worst elements of socialism and capitalism and blended them. We encourage outrageous business practices -- the equivalent of playing the lottery repeatedly -- that encourage boom and bust cycles of soaring profits followed by ruinous results. As CNBC's Jim Cramer says "We're all communists now." This must be the last time.

It is not hard to pick through the ruins and find irony. Investigators are still sniffing around trading patterns, but it appears a feeding frenzy of short sellers played at least some role in the takedown of Wall Street's biggest names. In other words, Wall Street almost ate itself, or rather was nearly eaten alive by shorts -- speculators who borrow someone else's shares in a company and sell them, betting that a company's stock will go down so they can buy them back at a cheaper price. When enough short sellers pile on, there's a feeding frenzy that can ultimately lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy, with all those outstanding shares of stock being sold by profiteers.

Fearing the virus-like band of speculators might continue to target other banks, Wall Street took the extraordinary step of banning short sales on Friday. That's odd, because those who talked about placing limitations on oil market speculators were often laughed at by investors as unsophisticated. Stock in double standards has exploded in recent days.

End the 'Great Divorce'
Still, we are better off making a deal and moving forward, as long as that deal bails out both homeowners and banks together. But a simple bailout is not enough. Now, things must change. The cult-like worship of unregulated markets must end. Never again do I want to hear someone preach to me about the market's infinite powers to heal itself. Stop arguing that all government intervention and regulation is bad, or that people who lose their home should just suck it up and deal with the Darwin effect. The high priests of unbridled laissez faire need to go take a long vacation now while reasonable people find a sensible middle course. Because you, Wall Street, and you, absolute capitalists, you could dish it out but you couldn't take it.

Today, I believe, we are offered a fresh start. We have an opportunity to set our economic system on a wise course for decades. And we have a chance to end what I call "the Great Divorce" between American companies and consumers. Remember when a Comcast technician renamed a customer's account "Bitch Dog." Ever read 1,000 comments in a blog about bank overdraft fees? Consumers and companies hate each other right now, and for decades have been engaged in a war that benefits neither.

It's time for a new social compact between government, industry and consumers that recognizes we're all in this together. Because now, we are all stockholders in many of these companies. It's time for an end to the mean side of America, the side that cheered while companies cheated people out of nickels dimes, quarters -- and eventually their homes. An end to get rich quick schemes and late-night infomercial hawkers who are enabled by mortgage backed securities. It's time for a "free market" that is not a free-for-all market. It's time for a transparent market where consumers have exactly as much information as the companies they're dealing with, so they can make solid decisions and the engine of the free market can do its work honestly.

In short, it's time for a return to honor, to a world where no company would ever base its business model on duping consumers, and a world where shoppers don't lie about defective products or emotional suffering. Tying new standards of fairness and transparency -- along with regulations and regulators with real teeth -- to any bank bailout is a way to get the whole country behind the plan. And, I believe, it's the only way forward. Because what happened to America this time is simple: We let the cheaters win for too long, and now we all have to pay.

Low-mileage drivers who install this gadget in their cars could get a discount from their insurance company in exchange for letting the firm track some of their driving behavior.

Of all the things that seem unfair about auto insurance, this is perhaps the worst: Infrequent drivers who log less than 5,000 miles a year, are charged roughly the same as long-distance commuters who cover 30,000 miles a year.

High-tech advances may end this inequity soon, but the cure could be worse than the disease – if it's not carefully regulated. Occasional drivers will soon have a chance to lower their insurance rates, but only if they agree to extensive electronic tracking of their driving habits.

New gadgets installed in cars will be able to tell insurers how many miles drivers have logged, what times of the day they drive, and even how frequently they abruptly stop and start. Other incarnations of the technology involve GPS devices that can even tell insurers precisely where drivers have traveled, and if they obeyed local speed limits.

So-called "pay as you drive" auto insurance pricing has been in the works since 1988, when California state legislators passed sweeping insurance reform that required insurers to weigh actual miles driven when setting rates. Years of industry appeals and technological hurdles postponed the pay as you drive provisions of the law, but the stage was set in 2006 when the California Department of Insurance gave firms two years to submit proposals for compliance with the 1988 law. The deadline passed in July.

In the meantime, insurers around the country began asking consumers to volunteer mileage information, offering small discounts to occasional drivers. But the self-reporting system has obvious limitations, so the industry began exploring electronic mileage monitoring systems.

Now, Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. is poised to offer the first nationwide Pay As You Drive insurance plan, called MyRate. The program is already available in seven U.S. states – Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey and Oregon.

Customers who sign up for MyRate get an immediate 5 to 10 percent discount and the promise of up to 25 percent reduction in exchange for installing a small electronic device under the hood of their car. There's no guarantee of additional savings: In some markets, Progressive says it could raise rates up to 9 percent for drivers who log too many miles or engage in other risky behavior.

The device connects with the car's diagnostic computer through the OBD II port included in all cars since 1996. In earlier test versions, consumers had to download data from the gadget every six months and send it to Progressive, but now the device comes with an attached cell phone that "phones home" every day, said Richard Hutchinson, MyRate program manager.

(The Progressive gadget connects to the same auto computer that's used by the ScanGauge device to help drivers optimize gas mileage. It was featured on MSNBC earlier this year)

Progressive's electronic mileage tracking system -- formerly called TripSense -- has been under development since 1998. It does not include a GPS device and Progressive does not have access to location information, Hutchinson said. Auto insurance rates are impacted by only three criteria -- miles driven, time of day and abrupt stops and starts.

For example, drivers on the road from midnight to 5 a.m. -- the most dangerous time -- get dinged. Rush hour driving is considered moderately risky, while other times are the least risky, Hutchinson said. Having access to that information allows Progressive to more accurately price its risk, the company claims. But early feedback from consumers gave the firm a clear message that it must balance the need for more data and consumers' privacy concerns, Hutchinson said.

"Their biggest concern is, 'Do you know where my whereabouts? And so we've stayed away from the GPS," he said.

California-based Consumer Watchdog wants to make sure GPS or location-based information doesn't creep into any insurers' plans. It has lobbied the California Department of Insurance to make sure consumers won't be required to participate in location-based tracking. It wants insurance companies to offer low-tech alternatives for pay as you drive discounts, such as regular manual odometer inspections.

"We don't have a problem with them knowing your mileage, it's the broader possibilities here," said Carmen Balber of Consumer Watchdog. The group objects to proposals that require anything beyond mileage data, including Progressive's "time of day" tracking. "We think you should be able to give these discounts without putting people in a situation where they have to choose between a fair insurance rate and their privacy, Balber said."

Balber compared insurance driving data collection to Easy Pass and other electronic toll payment mechanisms. Both store information about drivers that can end up being used as evidence in lawsuits or other legal actions, she said.

Balber also argued that while Progressive's MyRate is an optional service, the firm offers automatic discounts to all participants, meaning those who don't sign up will be forced to pay more.

But other analysts say mileage-based discounts will lower costs for the insurance industry as a whole, and most consumers will benefit. The programs also encourage motorists to drive fewer miles annually, reducing the number of accidents, pollution and national infrastructure costs, they say. A Brookings Institution report published earlier this year said nationwide implementation of pay as you drive insurance would result in savings of $52 billion – and low-mileage drivers would save an average of $256 each year. Of course, high-mileage drivers would pay more.

But the program has other, more subtle benefits, Hutchinson said. Drivers who sign up with MyRate get access to a Web site that lets them monitor their mileage usage and other driving habits. So far, consumers enjoy the service, he said, and they learn from it how to reduce their insurance bill and lower their risk of having an accident.

About one-third of customers who are offered the MyRate plan chose it, Hutchinson said.

Of course, some customers do find the service a little unnerving.

"A minority (or our customers) is philosophically opposed to this tracking behavior and our response to that is 'fine,'" he said. The firms plans to keep MyRate voluntary and be clear about what it's doing with all the data it collects. "We want people to be comfortable with what we're doing. We believe in complete transparency," Hutchinson said.

Read msnbc.com's special report, Privacy Lost

So far, GMAC Insurance is the only other insurer to announce plans for a major low-mileage discount based on electronic tracking. GMAC uses the OnStar system to track miles driven, and offers discounts to drives who log less than 15,000 miles per year.

Other insurance firms are in various stages of testing (for more information see a detailed analysis at Insure.com)

But with California regulators forcing the issue – the state's requirements will be finalized next year – mileage tracking devices will likely be available to most drivers very soon.

Part of vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Social Security number apparently was published on the Web earlier this week, stirring up privacy concerns. The data – labeled as the first five digits of the candidate's SSN – is widely available from background services like ChoicePoint or LexisNexis. In fact, such partial SSNs routinely appear on reports anyone could obtain on their neighbor or their nanny.

A report of the Palin SSN leak Tuesday on the Politico.com Web site evoked memories of a scandal in 2006 that erupted after Democratic staffers obtained Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele's credit report. But the incident involving Palin bears few similarities.

The first five digits of Palin's SSN appeared in a document posted on Politico, which described the paper as an "opposition document" compiled in 2006 on behalf of Tony Knowles, her Democratic opponent in Alaska's gubernatorial race that year.

The highly detailed 63-page document contains mostly newspaper clippings designed to call attention to Palin's positions on controversial topics like abortion. But in a section marked "Palin Background," a chart containing Palin's name, birthday and part of her SSN appeared. Various previous addresses also were listed. Palin's campaign could not be reached to confirm the accuracy of the information. Politico has since obscured all nine digits of Palin's Social Security number.

The site did not identify the source of the document, except to state in an accompanying story that it was not obtained from the Obama campaign. It did not immediately respond to inquiries from msnbc.com about the document.

Publication of the first five digits of Palin's Social Security number does put Palin at a modest risk for identity theft, though someone would still have to guess the other four digits.

But those five digits would be easy for anyone to obtain. Services like ChoicePoint and LexisNexis provide partial Social Security numbers to customers who order background reports. ChoicePoint's policy, for example, is to obscure only the last four digits of SSNs, said company spokesman Chuck Jones.

Taken together with Palin's past addresses, that portion of the opposition document appears to be lifted directly from a commercially available background report.

The document also lists other personal information, such as the size of Palin's mortgages and the vehicle identification numbers for all 26 cars the Palin family has registered since 1994.

There's nothing illegal about obtaining such reports. Many companies use them to "background" potential employees, and journalists regularly use them as reporting tools.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea to sell any part of someone's personal information, but that's a debate that ranges well beyond this campaign.

Since many companies use the last four digits of a Social Security number as a password, revealing the first five SSN digits is generally considered less risky. In fact, the first three can be guessed with relative ease, as they are based on geographical birthplace.

Release of Palin's partial SSN reminded some observers of the Steele credit report incident. In 2005, two members of New York's Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer staff obtained a credit report for Steele, who was then Maryland's lieutenant governor. Steele at the time was considered a likely GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland, and Schumer led the Democrats' effort to win a majority in the Senate. Steele eventually ran in 2006 and lost.

Obtaining a credit report without someone's permission is a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The staffers were fired.

Too much information, too little legislation
The Palin background document and its partial SSN, while to some unsavory, should not be compared with the theft of a political opponent's credit report. But it is another opportunity to consider the uncomfortable ease with which people's personal information can be obtained without their permission, and the need to regulate the databases that track us.

Rob Douglas, who runs InsideIDTheft.info, said Congress has shirked its duties to reign in the collection and sale of personal information. As a result, criminals wouldn't have too much trouble getting the rest of Palin's SSN, he said.

"Social Security numbers are floating around all over the place. And for 10 years Congress has been dinking around on Capitol Hill, discussing what to do about it," he said.

"See who your neighbors are," says the breathless e-mail from FelonSpy.com, promising to expose "all the people close to your home that have been convicted of ANY felonies."

Click on the link and enter your address, and you'll see a highly detailed Google map with red pins/balloons on it, each containing an offender's name, age and felony offense.

If you haven't seen an e-mail like this already, you will soon.

Unfortunately for the criminally curious, FelonSpy.com is a hoax. The realistic-looking arrest data plotted on it is randomly generated, says the site author, who spoke with msnbc.com on the condition of anonymity. But the persistence of the gag, which was dispelled by hoax-busting Web site Snopes.com in February, speaks to how curious American are about their neighbors and about neighborhood crime. And while FelonySpy.com isn't real, a host of new Web sites offering maps with just slightly less detailed crime data are trying to capitalize on our seemingly endless appetite for the old-fashioned police blotter.

The Internet is uniquely qualified to offer users such intensely local news. Reading through pages and pages of police reports listed on newspaper pages was a challenge; entering your home address into a form and seeing a map of recent police events near your home is easy -- and just about irresistible.

Chicago resident and journalist Adrian Holovaty started a site called ChicagoCrime.org in 2005 after persuading city police to share crime data with him. After receiving a grant from the Knight Foundation, he expanded the service to several other major U.S. cities and widened the data stream to include other municipal events, like permit applications. His project is now called Everyblock.com, and covers nine of the largest U.S. cities, including New York, Washington D.C., and Seattle.

"We spend a lot of time trying to convince local governments to open up data that citizens might be interested in," Holovaty said. "If you live in an urban area, so much is happening around you, and there are so many media outlets and blogs and government Web sites with bits of news, it's hard to keep track of."

Despite all those news outlets, only the most dramatic crimes ever make news – even though a broken car window down the block is probably more interesting than a murder which takes place across the city. Everyblock.com tries to plug that information gap.

Holovaty said he will soon offer the software he's developed for free to municipalities around the country.
"It's an experiment in journalism," he said.

Crimereports.com, based in Utah, uses a different model. The firm charges local police departments $99-$199 per month to publish their data on the CrimeReports' Web site. So, far, says founder Greg Whisenant, 260 cities have signed up since the service launched in May of 2007.

"I like the idea of putting more knowledge and more information into the hands of people," he said. "The chief complaint from police is that the public is not engaged. Well, this gets the public engaged."
Some states, such as Utah, have signed up with CrimeReports and given their municipalities licenses to use the service.

"I think CrimeReports is the future," said Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff. "People are really excited about it here." He says about half of Utah cities are already up and running on the site.

CrimeReports also lets visitors register to receive e-mails every time there's an incident near their home. About 20,000 users have registered, Whisenant said.

Data not detailed
Be warned: Voyeurs who've seen the fake details offered in the FelonySpy.com hoax might be disappointed when logging in to Everyblock.com or CrimeReports.com. The crime-mapping services should not be confused with paid criminal background checks on individuals. Instead, the sites chiefly offer aggregated data for small geographic areas. In nearly all cities that are publishing crime information online, the crime data is severely limited by police. Exact addresses are omitted, so crimes are only plotted to the block level.
In most cases, names are omitted too, and there's no narrative or description of crime events. In fact, users who pull up their street will really only see a bunch of icons or pushpins signifying types of crimes -- commonly robberies, burglaries or assaults -- that occurred nearby. All the sites say they are trying to persuade police agencies to supply more specific data.

Still, even limited data is of use to residents, says Colin Drane, a Baltimore resident who founded SpotCrime.com, which operates now in 150 cities.

"It creates accountability for the powers that be," he said. Recently, he had a GPS gadget stolen from his car in front of his home, and after filing a police report, felt underwhelmed by the response. "But if it's at least a data point on a map, you can feel you did something, alerted your neighbors."
SpotCrime doesn't charge police departments to publish their data; instead Drane sells advertisements on his site. He also has a new site, UCrime.com, which offers similar service for college campuses around the country.

'Subject to misinterpretation'
Police departments have used crime-mapping software internally for some time, but the sudden proliferation of public-facing crime mapping tools raises interesting questions. Databases have the same seductive quality as photographs, in that people tend to see them as infallibly accurate. In fact, both pictures and databases can lie, or at least be subject to interpretation. A police department that does a poor job feeding data into the system might appear safer than a nearby department that aggressively publishes incidents, for example. And a string of car thefts by one criminal could suddenly make one block stand out on a map of pushpins. That could be devastating to a homeowner who's just put their place on the market.

"Crime data is subject to misinterpretation. That is a challenge. But this is a starting point," Whisenant said, adding that he thinks the good far outweighs the bad. "The fact that it might be misconstrued doesn't justify not sharing it. We are giving the public the ability to really be informed."

Holovaty said an important debate has yet to take place about increased release of police data and other local information. In London, for example, some have complained that block-by-block publication of police reports will reinforce stereotypes about bad neighborhoods. But ultimately, he said, crime data belongs to the public.

"Every database is flawed, but having the data is better than not having the data," he said.

There are other hazards which have emerged in the race to map crime data, says Holovaty. When municipalities turn to for-profit companies to publish public information, there's a risk that the data will no longer be free to citizens. He says some towns' relationship with CrimeReports is exclusive, and those towns refuse to share their crime data with his Everyblock project. SpotCrime's Drane had the same complaint.

"I'm concerned about anything that creates a monopoly on this data," Drane said.

Whisenant said his firm doesn't sign exclusive contracts with municipalities, but some do find it inefficient to work with more than one vendor for crime mapping services.

Drane said he hopes there will be many "positive unintended consequences" to publication of the crime data. Citizens might provide additional, voluntary number-crunching and help police pick out patterns, for example. At a bare minimum, residents can get immediate word of a crime spree in their neighborhood and take prompt action -- the same way homeowners now get warning that a bad weather is on the way.

"We want to be the AccuWeather of crime," Drane said, referring to the popular weather forecasting site.