RadioShack, as many well know, finally declared bankruptcy this year. This is likely to finally give economists peace of mind, since the continued existence of the Shack had many questioning their own devotion to the tenets of the dismal science.

One interesting fact has come out of the bankruptcy proceedings – RadioShack customer’s private data may very well be one of the companies most significant assets.

Brief primer on bankruptcy: when a company can no longer pay its debts, it can seek protection from creditors from the federal judiciary. There are a number of ways to declare bankruptcy, but RadioShack chose Chapter 11, which doesn’t automatically lead to liquidation (that’s Chapter 7), but the reorganization can lead to something that looks a lot like liquidation anyway. And that’s what’s happening here. Amazon is likely to buy some of RadioShack, as are the major cell phone carriers.

In order for this process to work, however, a company going through the bankruptcy must lay all its assets on the table, open its books. Here, RadioShack has listed all the information it has on its past customers as an asset. Your personal information has, for a long time, been the implicitly valuable thing underlying the business model of almost every Internet company. Only here, that open secret has been rewritten explicitly.

And that is why this asset has drawn an objection, but not an objection that this personal data belongs to the consumers. Rather, Apple is objecting that the consumer information that RadioShack collected when it sold Apple products belongs to Apple and should not be considered an asset in this bankruptcy. Apple sees the value of this information and wants it.

As usual, Apple and companies like it have armies of lawyers looking out for their own interests. And, again as usual, consumers simply don’t. This is far from the first time that personal data has left the control of the person and it won’t be the last. Get used to being seen as an asset in someone else’s business.