WSJ.com - U.S.-Born Taliban Detainee To Meet His Attorney:

"A U.S.-born man captured in Afghanistan and held by the military for more than two years will meet with an attorney for the first time on Tuesday, a federal public defender said.
Frank Dunham, the federal public defender in Alexandria, Va., said he would meet Yaser Hamdi at the military brig in Charleston, S.C., on 8 a.m. Tuesday. But the meeting will take place under conditions Mr. Dunham called onerous. A military officer will be present, the meeting will be recorded and Mr. Hamdi will be barred from discussing the conditions of his confinement, Mr. Dunham said.
'For all those reasons, the meeting will be very short and lacking much substance,' Mr. Dunham said. But despite those restrictions, 'it would be inhumane not to go down there and tell him what's going on.' The public defender said that since the government considers anything Mr. Hamdi or others held as enemy combatants to be classified, he would not be able to discuss anything Mr. Hamdi might tell him."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Bombay plans cyber cafe controls:

"Internet cafe owners in India's commercial and entertainment capital, Bombay, are angry at plans to regulate the city's cyber centres.
They object to plans which would force them to keep records of people using their internet facilities.
The proposals will be put to the state legislature next month.
Police say they need new powers to prevent the misuse of the web by what they call terrorists, hackers, paedophiles and users of adult sites. "

Citing Free Speech, Judge Voids Part of Antiterror Act

"The USA Patriot Act places no limitation on the type of expert advice and assistance which is prohibited, and instead bans the provision of all expert advice and assistance regardless of its nature," Judge Collins wrote in a ruling issued late Friday.

As a result, the law could be construed to include "unequivocally pure speech and advocacy protected by the First Amendment," wrote the judge, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.

Supreme Court to Review Using Execution in Juvenile Cases:

"The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for crimes committed at the age of 16 or 17."

The Politics of Security:

"A federal judge has just struck down, as unconstitutionally vague, the act's ban on giving advice and assistance to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations. But the act is not merely constitutionally suspect. There are better ways to make the country safe: inspect more of the shipping containers coming into United States ports, increase security around nuclear and chemical plants, and buy up enriched uranium before it falls into the wrong hands. But the money to do such things is in short supply after the president's tax cuts. Taking away civil liberties may not expand Mr. Bush's gaping budget deficit, but its price in lost freedom is more than we can afford."

WSJ.com - Justices Agree to Hear Case Of U.S.-Born Terror Suspect:

"WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court expanded its review of government antiterrorism measures Friday, agreeing to hear the case of a U.S.-born man captured during the fighting in Afghanistan and held incommunicado and without charges.

Justices also said Friday they will consider whether companies can be forced to pay to clean up polluted property after they have sold the land, even if the government doesn't demand it.

In the terrorism case, the high court said it will consider the appeal from Yaser Esam Hamdi, whom the government has labeled an enemy combatant ineligible for ordinary legal protections and a danger to the U.S.

Mr. Hamdi's case tests the legal and constitutional rights of U.S. citizens captured in the war on terrorism, and raises wider questions about the balance between security and liberty. It is the second major terrorism-related case the high court will hear this term.

The court will probably hear the Hamdi case in April, with a ruling expected by July.

The high court's decision to review the case is another in a recent series of legal setbacks for the Bush administration in terrorism cases. The administration had strongly urged the high court to stay out of the Hamdi case, or to shelve it for now, pending an appeal in a similar case of another U.S.-born terrorism suspect.

The administration won its argument in a lower court that Mr. Hamdi may be held indefinitely and without the usual legal rights due to U.S. citizens, and wanted that ruling to stand.

Mr. Hamdi's father filed a civil-liberties challenge on his son's behalf, and a lawyer who has never met Mr. Hamdi is pressing the case at the Supreme Court.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond wrongly bowed to government arguments about security, lawyer Frank Dunham told the high court in a legal filing.

The lower federal appeals court not only "embraced an unchecked executive power to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of being affiliated with enemies, but it also abandoned procedural safeguards designed to promote truth and fairness."

In response, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer called Mr. Hamdi a prime example of a dangerous terror suspect who should be locked up. "Hamdi is a classic battlefield detainee -- captured in Afghanistan, an area of active combat, with an enemy unit," Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court.

Despite that argument, the government recently agreed to allow Mr. Dunham to visit his would-be client. The government still contends Mr. Hamdi isn't constitutionally entitled to a lawyer, and that question will still be a part of the Supreme Court case.

Officials decided to grant the access to a lawyer because Mr. Hamdi is a U.S. citizen and the military has finished interrogating him, the Pentagon said last month. Mr. Hamdi hasn't been charged with any crime.

The move was seen at the time as an attempt to blunt criticism of government antiterror tactics, and as a way to improve the government's legal standing at the Supreme Court. The meeting hasn't yet taken place.

Earlier this week, Mr. Olson asked the justices to put off consideration of the Hamdi case, at least until the government finishes a hurry-up appeal in the similar case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member seized in Chicago in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." Mr. Padilla was declared an enemy combatant and, like Mr. Hamdi, eventually transferred to the South Carolina naval brig.

The administration plans an appeal in the Padilla case by Jan. 20, and had suggested that the justices consider the two cases together.

The court didn't address that request in its brief order granting review in the Hamdi case. It isn't clear now whether the court will also agree to hear the Padilla appeal when it comes. The two cases raise slightly different constitutional issues because Mr. Hamdi was captured abroad and Mr. Padilla was picked up on U.S. soil."