ACLU

I’ve posted this as an update on the original post, but it’s also worth bringing out as a separate posting. I’ve made a few minor changes here (e.g., to insert the point about Cable America that is made elsewhere in the original post). Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list “bogus” and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He rightly dismisses Cable America from the list on the grounds that Cox entered into an agreement to acquire them in January of this year–I grant his point and that reduces the number of broadband providers by one. He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn’t matter whether it’s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists. Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon’s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn’t viable doesn’t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are two different services–he doesn’t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband. He says he doesn’t understand why I put the City of Tempe’s municipal WiFi network in the list–I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler’s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.) Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn’t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality. Doug’s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use. But it’s important to note that the net neutrality bills in Congress do count all these options and place regulations on them–they count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction, whether wired or wireless. I don’t see Doug volunteering to exempt things he doesn’t count as valid broadband options from broadband net neutrality restrictions. It appears to me that Doug’s position is that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service. (UPDATE: I was just looking at Doug’s blogroll, and he’s pretty strong evidence that net neutrality positions don’t necessarily correlate with political positions. Doug’s political blog links include Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and the dishonest nutcases at “Stop the ACLU.”) ...

Security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier gave a talk yesterday to the ACLU Washington’s membership conference at which he argued that massive automated wiretapping generates too many false alarms to be useful, as described in the Seattle Times. As a commenter on Schneier’s blog notes, mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, both of which I highly recommend), writing in a New York Times op-ed titled “Panning for Terrorists,” makes the same point. The problem is essentially the same one that makes it pointless to engage in programs of blanket drug-testing of grade school children or mandatory HIV testing in order to obtain a marriage license–the population being tested contains such a small number of people who meet the criteria being tested for, which means that even a highly accurate test returns vastly more false positives than true positives. Paulos points out that a 99-percent-accurate sorting mechanism for detecting terrorist conversations, on a population of 300 million Americans that includes one-in-a-million with terrorist ties (300) will identify 297 of them, along with 3 million innocent Americans. That’s 297 true positives and 3 million false positives, producing a new sample population that is .009% terrorists and 99.99% innocent Americans who may be wrongly investigated.

The two major skeptical organizations in the U.S.–Michael Shermer’s Skeptics Society and Paul Kurtz’s Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) (or, actually, its parent organization, the Center for Inquiry)–have both decided to use combatting the threat of Intelligent Design as a major platform of their most recent fundraising campaigns. The Skeptics Society sent out a card-sized folded mailing with a photo of Darwin on the front with the caption “Help us keep religion out of the science classroom!” The inside reported on recent events, such as Cardinal Schonborn’s New York Times piece that the Discovery Institute and their PR agency, Creative Response Concepts, helped arrange. It continues with facts about the amount of funding the Discovery Institute receives, quotes from Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, Harris and Pew poll results showing the general public’s ignorance on evolution. So how will collected funds be used to combat Intelligent Design? Apparently Shermer has a new book coming out this year titled Why Darwin Matters: Evolution, Design, and the Battle for Science and Religion (Henry Holt/Times Books), copies of which will be sent “to every Congressman, Senator, and Governor in America, along with the relevant state boards of education, and state legislative bodies contemplating passing pro-creationist legislation.” That doesn’t strike me as a particularly productive way to combat ID–I suspect most of the recipients will not read the book. There are other bullet items listed–publication of “a special volume of essays on evolution and Intelligent Design creationism collected from the pages of Skeptic magazine, to be published by the Skeptics Society and widely distributed to science teachers throughout America to give them the intellectual tools they need to deal with ID and creationism.” Another is to “distribute free copies to teachers” of the existing booklet How to Debate a Creationist. That sounds much more worthwhile, though I think that it would be more productive to give teachers tools like Eugenie Scott’s Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Mark Isaak’s Counter-Creationism Handbook (the online version of which is here–some of the best teacher and student resources are already free and online). The bonuses for contributors include a free book from a selection of six for $100 “Supporters” (In Darwin’s Shadow by Tim Callahan is the only one that appears directly relevant to the topic). $500 “sponsors” get a free 3-year subscription to Skeptic; $1000 “benefactors” get two free tickets to the 2006 Skeptics Society conference on “The Environmental Wars”; and $5000 “patrons” get dinner with Shermer and “a world-renowned scientist (to be announced)” and a private tour of Mt. Wilson’s 100-inch telescope and use of the 60-inch telescope, along with the gifts the other levels get. The Center for Inquiry sent out a more elaborate package, including a DVD presentation promoting the “New Future Fund,” a campaign to raise $26.6 million, “the largest sum ever raised in the name of humanism, skepticism, and scientific naturalism.” The four major goals for the use of the money are “Legal Activism,” “Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,” “Transnational Development,” and “Outreach and Education.” The second item, “Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,” discusses Intelligent Design, and says that “CSICOP is fighting back, mobilizing grassroots outreach and expert scientists when ID proposals threaten. We’re especially aggressive online, publishing a stable of online columnists and a dynamic new website, Creation & Intelligent Design Watch.” The website has a pretty substantial amount of content, with the November/December Skeptical Inquirer (a special issue on “Evolution and the ID Wars”) as the centerpiece (along with other CSICOP-related articles, including many of Chris Mooney’s Doubt and About articles), links to items appropriate for classroom use on the left side, and links to current news stories on the right side. Now, I’m all in favor of a diversity of approaches to promote critical thinking and combat Intelligent Design’s political actions, but everyone should keep in mind that the two organizations actually doing the most in this arena are the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which is the only organization devoted entirely to fighting creationism and promoting accurate teaching about evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has provided the legal support for every major creation/evolution courtroom battle. By all means support the Skeptics Society and Center for Inquiry’s programs, but if Intelligent Design is a concern, please be sure to support the NCSE and ACLU.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the NSA asking for an injunction against warrantless interception of communications to international destinations. The plaintiffs include James Bamford (author of The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, and A Pretext for War), Christopher Hitchens, Greenpeace, Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and others.

Jim Romenesko at Poynter Forums posts an incisive article on how the Fox News Channel has been pushing this phony “War on Christmas” idea as a method of division. The article is apparently by Charlie Reina, a former Fox News Channel producer. A couple key paragraphs: Fox anchors will tell you that no one in management dictates that they bring up religion. But my experience at FNC is that, once management makes its views known, the anchors have a clear blueprint of what’s expected of them. In this case, the point man is network vice president John Moody. A scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II, John is a devout Catholic who seldom holds back on matters of the church, or in framing his views in “good guy, bad guy” terms. For example, during the 2001 Senate hearings on John Ashcroft’s appointment as Attorney General, Moody’s daily memos to the staff repeatedly touted Ashcroft as “deeply religious” and the victim of Democrats’ intolerance. One memo suggested a question of the day: “Can a man of deep Christian faith be appointed to a federal job, or will his views be equated with racism, intolerance and mean-spiritedness?” He added: “(K)eep pounding at the question: should Ashcroft’s detractors try to be as tolerant as they would have him be?”Then there’s Fox management’s view on the separation of church and state, and on those who support it. One not-so-subtle hint came in March, 2004, after a Baghdad bombing gave reporters at a hotel in the Iraqi capital a scare. Moody’s memo that day advised FNC staffers to “offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don’t shine).” Not mentioned is that the book The War on Christmas is by Fox News “Big Story” host John Gibson, or the multiple fabrications by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. (Update on the latter: Plano schools are getting some press over their response to O’Reilly’s fabricated claim that they banned students from wearing Christmas colors.)

The Senate roll call vote is here. Unless a reauthorization passes, various provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act set to expire after three years will expire on December 31, 2005. These provisions include roving wiretaps, the ability to obtain certain kinds of business records without a court order, expansion of wiretap capabilities, certain kinds of sharing between agencies of information obtained via wiretap, etc. The specific details of what was in the Senate bill and the corresponding House bill may be found here (PDF). Some of the pieces of these bills were beneficial, e.g., placing a sunset provision on the use of National Security Letters, which predated USA PATRIOT and which do not currently have an expiration date. Others extended provisions due to sunset on December 31, 2005 to 2006 or later years. (The ACLU has a lawsuit against the constitutionality of National Security Letters.) The vote was 52-47; 60 votes were needed to end the filibuster. 2 Democrats and 50 Republicans voted yes, 41 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and one independent voted no. Arizona: McCain and Kyl both voted yes. UPDATE (March 25, 2007): The link for the ACLU’s lawsuit on National Security Letters is stale, you can now find that information here. ...

Sunday morning’s first session was by Stuart Krone, billed as a computer security expert working at Intel. Krone, wearing a National Security Agency t-shirt, of a type sold at the National Cryptologic Museum outside Ft. Meade, spoke on the subject “Technology: Why We’re Screwed.” This was a fear-mongering presentation on technological developments that are infringing on freedom, mostly through invasion of privacy. The talk was a mix of fact, error, and alarmism. While the vast majority of what Krone talked about was real, a significant number of details were distorted or erroneous. In each case of distortion or error, the distortions enhanced the threat to individual privacy or the malice behind it, and attributed unrealistic near-omniscience and near-omnipotence to government agencies. I found his claim that the NSA had gigahertz processors twenty years before they were developed commercially to be unbelievable, for example. He also tended to omit available defenses–for instance, he bemoaned grocery store loyalty programs which track purchases and recommended against using them, while failing to note that most stores don’t check the validity of signup information and there are campaigns to trade such cards to protect privacy. Krone began by giving rather imprecise definitions for three terms: convenience, freedom, and technology. For convenience, he said it is something that is “easy to do,” freedom is either “lack of coercion” or “privacy,” and technology is “not the same as science” but is “building cool toys using scientific knowledge.” While one could quibble about these definitions, I think they’re pretty well on track, and that a lack of society intrusion into private affairs is a valuable aspect of freedom. Krone then said that the thesis of his talk is to discuss ways in which technology is interfering with freedom, while noting that technology is not inherently good or evil, only its uses are. He began with examples of advancements in audio surveillance, by saying that private corporations have been forced to do government’s dirty work to avoid Freedom of Information Act issues, giving as an example CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) wiretaps. He stated that CALEA costs are added as a charge on your phone bill, so you’re paying to have yourself wiretapped. He said that CALEA now applies to Voice Over IP (VOIP), including Skype and Vonage, and that the government is now tapping all of those, too. Actually, what he’s referring to is that the FCC issued a ruling on August 5, 2005 on how CALEA impacts VOIP which requires providers of broadband and VOIP services which connect to the public telephone network to provide law enforcement wiretap capability within 18 months. There is no requirement for VOIP providers which don’t connect to the public telephone network, so the peer-to-peer portion of Skype is not covered (but SkypeIn and SkypeOut are). This capability doesn’t exist in most VOIP providers’ networks, and there is strong argument that the FCC doesn’t have statutory authority to make this ruling, which is inconsistent with past court cases–most telecom providers are strongly opposing this rule. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent site of information about CALEA. Krone next talked about the ability to conduct audio surveillance on the inside of the home using 30-100 GHz microwaves to measure vibrations inside the home. This is real technology for which there was a recent patent application. He raised the issue of cell phone tracking, as is being planned to use for monitoring traffic in Kansas City (though he spoke as though this was already in place–this was a common thread in his talk, to speak of planned or possible uses of technology as though they are already in place). (This is actually currently being used in Baltimore, MD, the first place in the U.S. to use it.) He spoke very briefly about Bluetooth, which he said was invented by Intel and other companies (it was invented by Ericsson, but Intel is a promoter member of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group along with Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Toshiba). He stated that it is completely insecure, that others can turn on your phone and listen to your phone’s microphone, get your address book, and put information onto your phone. While he’s quite right that Bluetooth in general has major security issues, which specific issues you may have depend on your model of phone and whether you use available methods to secure or disable Bluetooth features. Personally, I won’t purchase any Bluetooth product unless and until it is securable–except perhaps a device to scan with. Next, Krone turned to video surveillance, stating that in addition to cameras being all over the place, there are now cameras that can see through walls via microwave, that can be used by law enforcement without a search warrant, which hasn’t been fully decided by the courts yet. I haven’t found anything about microwave cameras that can see through walls, but this sounds very much like thermal imaging, which the Supreme Court has addressed. In Kyllo v. U.S. (533 U.S. 27, 2001) it was ruled that the use of a thermal imaging device to “look through walls” constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus requires a search warrant. Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer ruled with the majority; Stevens, Rehnquist, O’Connor, and Kennedy dissented. Krone briefly mentioned the use of “see through your clothes” X-ray scanners, stating that six airports are using them today. This technology exists and is in TSA trials, and was actually tested at a Florida airport back in 2002. A newer, even more impressive technology is the new Tadar system unveiled in Germany in mid-October 2005. He addressed RFIDs, and specifically RFIDs being added to U.S. passports in 2006, and some of the risks this may create (such as facilitating an electronic “American detector”). This is a real threat that has been partially addressed by adding a radio shielding to the passport to prevent the RFID from being read except when the passport is open. As Bruce Schneier notes, this is not a complete safeguard. Krone also stated that there is a California bill to put RFIDs in cars, with no commercial justification, just to “know where everyone is and what they have with them at all times.” I’m not aware of the bill he is referring to, but the use of transponders in cars for billing purposes for toll roads is a possible commercial justification. He spoke about the laser printer codes that uniquely identify all documents printed by certain laser printers, which have been in place for the last decade and were recently exposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and reported in this blog (Krone mistakenly called it the “Electronic Freedom Foundation,” a common mistake). He also briefly alluded to steganography, which he wrongly described as “the art of hiding information in a picture.” While hiding a message in a picture is one form of steganography, what is characteristic of steganography is that it is hiding a message in such a way as to disguise the fact that a message is even present. He then went on to talk about Intel’s AMT product–“Advanced Management Technology.” This is a technology that allows computers to be remotely rebooted, have the console redirected, obtain various information out of NVRAM about what software is installed, and to load software updates remotely, even if the system is so messed up that the operating system won’t boot. This is a technology that will be extremely useful for large corporations with a geographically dispersed work force and a small IT staff; there is similar technology from Sun Microsystems in their Sun Fire v20z and v40z servers which allows remote access via SSH to the server independent of the operating system, which allows console port and keyboard access, power cycling of the server, etc. This is technology with perfectly legitimate uses, allowing the owner of the machine to remotely deal with issues that would previously have required either physically going to the box or the expense of additional hardware such as a console server. Krone described AMT in such a way as to omit all of the legitimate uses, portraying it as a technology that would be present on all new computers sold whether you like it or not, which would allow the government to turn your computer on remotely, bypass all operating system security software including a PC firewall, and take an image of your hard drive without your being able to do anything about it. This is essentially nonsensical fear-mongering–this technology is specifically designed for the owner of the system, not for the government, and there are plenty of mechanisms which could and should be used by anyone deploying such systems to prevent unauthorized parties from accessing their systems via such an out-of-band mechanism, including access control measures built into the mechanisms and hardware firewalls. He then went on to talk about Digital Rights Management (DRM), a subject which has been in the news lately as a result of Sony BMG’s DRM foibles. Krone stated that DRM is being applied to videos, files, etc., and stated that if he were to write a subversive document that the government wanted to suppress, it would be able to use DRM to shut off all access to that file. This has DRM backwards–DRM is used by intellectual property owners to restrict the use of their property in order to maximize the potential paying customer base. The DRM technologies for documents designed to shut off access are intended for functions such as allowing corporations to be able to guarantee electronic document destruction in accordance with their policies. This function is a protection of privacy, not an infringement upon it. Perhaps Krone intended to spell out a possible future like that feared by Autodesk founder John Walker in his paper “The Digital Imprimatur," where he worries that future technology will require documents published online to be certified by some authority that would have the power to revoke it (or revoke one’s license to publish). While this is a potential long-term concern, the infrastructure that would allow such restrictions does not exist today. On the contrary, the Internet of today makes it virtually impossible to restrict the publication of undesired content. Krone spoke about a large number of other topics, including Havenco, Echelon, Carnivore/DCS1000, web bugs and cookies, breathalyzers, fingerprints, DNA evidence, and so on. With regard to web bugs, cookies, and malware, he stated that his defense is not to use Windows, and to rely on open source software, because he can verify that the content and function of the software is legitimate. While I hate to add to the fear-mongering, this was a rare instance where Krone doesn’t go far enough in his worrying. The widespread availability of source code doesn’t actually guarantee the lack of backdoors in software for two reasons. First, the mere availability of eyeballs doesn’t help secure software unless the eyeballs know what to look for. There have been numerous instances of major security holes persisting in actively maintained open source software for many years (wu-ftpd being a prime example). Second, and more significantly, as Ken Thompson showed in his classic paper “Reflections On Trusting Trust” (the possibility of which was first mentioned in Paul Karger and Roger Schell’s “Multics Security Evaluation” paper), it is possible to build code into a compiler that will insert a backdoor into code whenever a certain sequence is found in the source. Further, because compilers are typically written in the same language that they compile, one can do this in such a way that it is bootstrapped into the compiler and is not visible in the compiler’s source code, yet will always be inserted into any future compilers which are compiled with that compiler or its descendants. Once your compiler has been compromised, you can have backdoors that are inserted into your code without being directly in any source code. Of the numerous other topics that Krone discussed or made reference to, there are three more instances I’d like to comment on: MRIs used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints, FinCen’s monitoring of financial transactions, and a presentation on Cisco security flaws at the DefCon hacker conference. In each case, Krone said things that were inaccurate. Regarding MRIs, Krone spoke of the use of MRIs as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints as though they were already in place. The use of fMRI as a lie detection measure is something being studied at Temple University, but is not deployed anywhere–and it’s hard to see how it would be practical as an airport security measure. Infoseek founder and Propel CEO Steve Kirsch proposed in 2001 using a brainscan recognition system to identify potential terrorists, but this doesn’t seem to have been taken seriously. There is a voice-stress analyzer being tested as an airport security “lie detector” in Israel, but everything I’ve read about voice stress analysis is that it is even less reliable than polygraphs (which themselves are so unreliable that they are inadmissible as evidence in U.S. courts). (More interesting is a “stomach grumbling” lie detector…) (UPDATE March 27, 2006: Stu Krone says in the comments on this post that he never said that MRIs were being used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints. I’ve verified from a recording of his talk that this is my mistake–he spoke only of fMRI as a tool in interrogation.) Regarding FinCen, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Krone made the claim that “FinCen monitors all transactions” and “keeps a complete database of all transactions,” and that for purchases made with cash, law enforcement can issue a National Security Letter, including purchases of automobiles. This is a little bit confused–National Security Letters have nothing specifically to do with financial transactions per se, but are a controversial USA PATRIOT Act invention designed to give the FBI the ability to subpoena information without court approval. I support the ACLU’s fight against National Security Letters, but they don’t have anything to do with FinCen. Krone was probably confused by the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act also expanded the requirement that companies whose customers make large cash purchases (more than $10,000 in one transaction or in two or more related transactions) fill out a Form 8300 and file it with the IRS. Form 8300 data goes into FinCen’s databases and is available to law enforcement, as I noted in my description of F/Sgt. Charles Cohen’s presentation at the Economic Crime Summit I attended. It’s simply not the case that FinCen maintains a database of all financial transactions. Finally, Krone spoke of a presentation at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas about Cisco router security. He said that he heard from a friend that another friend was to give a talk on this subject at DefCon, and that she (the speaker) had to be kept in hiding to avoid arrest from law enforcement in order to successfully give the talk. This is a highly distorted account of Michael Lynn’s talk at the Black Hat Briefings which precede DefCon. Lynn, who was an employee of Internet Security Systems, found a remotely exploitable heap overflow vulnerability in the IOS software that runs on Cisco routers as part of his work at ISS. ISS had cold feet about the presentation, and told Lynn that he would be fired if he gave the talk, and Cisco also threatened him with legal action. He quit his job and delivered the talk anyway, and ended up being hired by Juniper Networks, a Cisco competitor. As of late July, Lynn was being investigated by the FBI regarding this issue, but he was not arrested nor in hiding prior to his talk, nor is he female. I found Krone’s talk to be quite a disappointment. Not only was it filled with careless inaccuracies, it presented nothing about how to defend one’s privacy. He’s right to point out that there are numerous threats to privacy and liberty that are based on technology, but there are also some amazing defensive mechanisms. Strong encryption products can be used to enhance privacy, the EFF’s TOR onion routing mechanism is a way of preserving anonymity, the Free Network Project has built mechanisms for preventing censorship (though which are also subject to abuse). ...

Ed Brayton comments on the “Isaac Newton of Intelligent Design”’s crazy accusations of obsession against his critics. Dembski’s latest is to accuse mathematician Jeff Shallit of being removed as a witness in the Dover trial because “his obsessiveness against me and ID made him a liability to the ACLU.” Actually, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, Dembski withdrew from the trial, and the defense did not use Dembski’s ideas in their case. Dembski then dug the hole deeper, stating that this couldn’t be the reason. Why not? Because he withdrew before Shallit’s deposition was taken. He went on to challenge the ACLU and Shallit to release a transcript of the deposition. Unfortunately for Dembski, it was the defense that took the deposition, to make sure they would be prepared in case Shallit would be used as a witness–and the deposition (at least in the preliminary, uncorrected transcript) is already a public record. Perhaps Dembski should work on responding to his critics, rather than accusing them of stalking him. ...

Clint Bolick and Alan Dershowitz have written two very different–yet only occasionally directly contradictory–rememberances of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bolick, in a piece distributed by the Goldwater Institute and published in the Arizona Republic, describes Rehnquist as a conservative, moderating influence on a liberal court, advocating state’s rights, school choice, and presiding over a court that has been “usually (though less frequently lately) siding with individual liberty over state power.” Dershowitz, on the other hand, in a piece published on the Huffington Post, describes Rehnquist as a bigot who enjoyed racist and anti-Semitic jokes, who defended the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson as a law clerk for Justice Jackson, and who began his legal career as a Republican thug who obstructed African-American and Hispanic voters at Phoenix polling places. Bolick gives a more nuanced view that actually addresses more of Rehnquist’s work on the court (though less than I would have expected), while Dershowitz emphasizes evidence of Rehnquist’s personal character which mostly derives from before he was on the Supreme Court. I was surprised that Bolick didn’t mention some of the recent cases (such as Raich v. Ashcroft and Kelo v. New London) where Rehnquist voted for liberty (and was unfortunately in the minority). Yet I have no doubt that there is accuracy in both descriptions. Bolick has in the past seen people as defenders of liberty who have done much to destroy it, such as former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Dershowitz alternatively takes courageous stands in defense of liberty and crazy stands which oppose it. One area where I was less than impressed with Rehnquist was on religious liberty, specifically for nonbelievers. He (like the majority) went the wrong way on Elk Grove v. Newdow (the Pledge of Allegiance “under God” case) and (unlike the majority) the wrong way on the McCreary County v. ACLU case (Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courtroom which included a written statement that the display was “in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics”).