Adopting the position of the Los Angeles prosecutor's office and the U.S. Justice Department, the high court ruled that a public employee has no First Amendment right in speech expressed as part of performing job-required duties.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said there is protection for whistle-blowers in federal and state laws and rules of conduct for government attorneys.

The case had been closely watched for its affect on the at-work, free-speech rights of the nation's 21 million public employees. About 100 cases involving internal communications are brought each year in federal court.

Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said, "In an age of excessive government secrecy, the Supreme Court has made it easier to engage in a government cover-up by discouraging internal whistle-blowing."

Other ACLU officials predicted the ruling will deter government employees from speaking out about wrongdoing for fear of losing their jobs.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos had sued his employer for retaliating against him for exercising his free-speech rights when he reported suspected wrongdoing in a memo to senior officials in his department.

The justices overturned a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that Ceballos' action was protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution because he was speaking on an issue of public concern.

Kennedy said exposing government inefficiency and misconduct was a matter of considerable significance, and that various measures have been adopted to protect employees and provide checks on supervisors who would order unlawful or inappropriate actions.

"When public employees made statement pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline," he wrote.

JUDICIAL INTRUSION IN THE WORKPLACE?

Kennedy said a ruling for Ceballos would result in a "new, permanent and intrusive role" for the courts in overseeing communications between government workers and their superiors, replacing managerial discretion with judicial supervision.

He was joined by the court's conservatives -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The court's liberals, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, dissented.

Stevens wrote, "The notion that there is a categorical difference between speaking as a citizen and speaking in the course of one's employment is quite wrong." He called the majority ruling "misguided."

Souter wrote in a separate dissent that government employees who speak out about about official wrongdoing should be eligible for First Amendment protection against reprisals.

Officers are guarding the military cargo ship docked at the port, sheriff's officials said.

Late Monday, protesters had chanted "Out of Olympia, Out of Iraq'' as they rocked a chain-link gate to the port, and at least three tried to use wooden boards to pry the gate open, The Olympian newspaper reported. A 50-ton piece of equipment was moved to reinforce the gate on the other side.

Police and sheriff's deputies clad in riot gear fired at least four rounds of pepper spray in an hour after asking the demonstrators several times to stop, authorities said. No one was arrested, but paramedics were dispatched to treat some activists.

Dozens of demonstrators crouched in the port plaza, dousing each other's eyes with water and offering slices of onion to soothe their throats.

"It burned. I couldn't open my eyes for 20 minutes,'' said Rachel Graham, who was among those hit. "My face is burning. I dunked my face in water and in Puget Sound.''

Activists began watching for a military ship more than a week ago after learning that Stryker vehicles and other Army gear from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a 4,000-soldier unit stationed at Fort Lewis, was being shipped to Iraq through the port.

Sixteen people were arrested in three days last week, mostly for pedestrian interference. The vessel arrived in Budd Inlet at the south end of Puget Sound about 7:30 p.m. Monday, accompanied by Coast Guard vessels with large guns to secure the waterway.

"The majority were very peaceful, nonviolent, just exercising their constitutional rights,'' sheriff's Capt. Bradley Watkins said.

In a previous trial, Muhammad, 45, was convicted of one murder in Virginia. He faces the death penalty for that killing.

In Maryland, the maximum sentence is life in prison without parole.

The attacks happened in October 2002 in the area around Washington, D.C.

Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, terrorized nearby communities by randomly shooting at people in parking lots, gas stations and bus stops.

Ten people were killed in the attacks, while three others were injured.

Malvo, 21, was convicted in Virginia for his part in the crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

During the trial in Maryland, Muhammad acted as his own lawyer and Malvo gave evidence against his former partner.

In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records to aid investigations of criminals "abusing kids and sending images of the abuse around the world through the Internet."

If data retention becomes viewed primarily as an anti-terrorism measure, recent legal and political spats could complicate the Justice Department's efforts to make it standard practice.

Especially after recent reports that AT&T has opened its databases to the National Security Agency, Internet and telecommunications executives have become skittish about appearing to be cooperating too closely with the federal government's surveillance efforts.

In addition, the positive publicity that Google received during its legal dispute with the Justice Department over search terms has demonstrated to Internet companies the benefits of objecting to government requests on privacy grounds.

"A monumental data trove is a crazy thing from a privacy perspective," said one person familiar with Friday's discussions. "It's crazy that the U.S. government is going to retain more data than the Chinese government does."

Comcast said in a statement that "we fully share the attorney general's concern with the need to combat illegal use of the Internet for child pornography, terrorism and other illegal activities. We applaud the attorney general's initiative in convening an internal task force on this issue and look forward to continuing to cooperate with him and the FBI."

"The reasons for skepticism are growing," said Jim Harper, an analyst at the free-market Cato Institute and member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. He predicted the reaction among Internet and telecom companies will be "mildly unfavorable but people are not yet to the point where they'll say the emperor has no clothes."

Details of the Justice Department's proposal remain murky. One possibility is requiring Internet providers to record the Internet addresses that their customers are temporarily assigned. A more extensive mandate would require them to keep track of the identities of Americans' e-mail and instant messaging correspondents and save the logs of Internet phone calls.

A Justice Department representative said Tuesday that the proposal would not require Internet providers to retain records of the actual contents of conversations and other Internet traffic.

Until Gonzales' public remarks last month, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, top administration officials began talking about it more favorably.

Two proposals to mandate data retention have surfaced in the U.S. Congress. One, backed by Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, says that any Internet service that "enables users to access content" must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could be discarded only at least one year after the user's account was closed.

The other was drafted by aides to Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a close ally of President Bush. Sensenbrenner said through a spokesman earlier this month, though, that his proposal is on hold because "our committee's agenda is tremendously overcrowded already."

'Preservation' vs. 'retention'

At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police agencies performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.

A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."

Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on if a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)

In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.

When adopting its data retention rules, the European Parliament approved U.K.-backed requirements saying that communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.

The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time, and duration of phone calls, VoIP calls, or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.

The class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in New York in 2002 on behalf of hundreds of Arab and Muslim men who were detained and deported as part of the government's investigation into the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The center had asked the judge to order the government to disclose whether telephone, e-mail or other communication between detainees and their lawyers had been monitored or intercepted since the detainees left the country.

The Justice Department said its lawyers and support staff hadn't received any attorney-client communications and that such conversations wouldn't be used in its defense.

But the government would not say whether employees or potential witnesses knew of any monitoring, saying such a disclosure could reveal classified information. It said it would allow witnesses to pick one of a series of statements about what they knew but reserved the right to call witnesses who refused to sign any statement.

The Center for Constitutional Rights applauded the ruling.

"Now they have to step forward and answer some tough questions," said the center's legal director, Bill Goodman.

The center said it would seek testimony from former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, both named in the lawsuit.

Telephone messages left for lawyers representing the government were not returned Tuesday. A woman who answered the telephone at the Justice Department said she could not contact a spokesperson after 9 p.m.

The judge said his order applied only to people involved in the lawsuit, which alleges that detainees were jailed on the basis of their race or religion and physically abused at a federal lockup in New York.

The lawsuit seeks restitution for the plaintiffs, who claim they were held for months without evidence linking them to terrorism, and an order saying the government can't resort to "preventive detention."

The government has denied any wrongdoing.

The committee heard testimony last Friday on how to balance First Amendment protections with the need to stem leaks.

Some Republicans counseled the prosecution of recipients of leaks, including journalists.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, blasted such talk. "If anyone here wants to imprison journalists, I invite them to spend some time in China, Cuba or North Korea and see whether they feel safer," she said. She singled out for criticism the prosecution of Steve Rosen, the former foreign policy director at American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst.

Harman said the 1917 statute used in the case was too broad. It is the first time the statute has been used in a prosecution.

The bipartisan resolutions, introduced May 25, were sponsored by four senators and four representatives, as well as Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, an organization that seeks rights for Jews displaced from Arab lands.

ccording to the organization, the number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries far surpasses the number of Palestinians who became refugees in 1948.

"This resolution urges the international community to place all refugees on equal footing when Middle East refugee matters are discussed," said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), one of the co-sponsors of the Senate resolution.

A similar resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives.

"The experiment, originally scheduled for June 2, 2006, will not be conducted earlier than June 23, 2006," said the statement.

The anticipated blast has long been described as being so powerful that it could send up a mushroom-like cloud 3,048 meters into the air.

Previously, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the test site in Nevada, had declared that the planned detonation of the explosive comprising ammonium nitrate and fuel oil would cause "no significant" environmental impact.

It had now "decided to postpone the experiment due to the scheduling of legal proceedings," the agency said.

Opponents were reported to have filed lawsuits in an attempt tostop the test blast, which they feared could spread radioactive dust into the air.

Divine Strake, an equivalent of 593 ton of TNT, is part of a U.S. effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Tuesday's event coincided with the launch by UBO of an album "Somos Americanos" (We Are Americans) which features the anthem and other songs about the immigrant experience by artists from across the United States and Latin America.

"Nuestro Himno" became the target of angry criticism on its release, with US President George W. Bush echoing others who argued that the national anthem should be sung in English.

"We're not political. We didn't do this to create a big stink," Kidron said. "But the fact is that the worst thing you can do is make people leave their culture at the border, because that's not what made America great."

The mini-concert on Ellis Island in the middle of New York harbour was held under a white marquee with the skyline of downtown Manhattan offering an impressive backdrop.

The island was formerly used as a processing station for millions of immigrants seeking entry into the United States. It is now a museum.

After a group of schoolchildren sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" in its original form, an a cappella trio from the Dominican Republic, Voz a Voz, sang the Spanish version.

One of the trio, Gio D'Olio, said he was unfazed by the controversy surrounding the "Nuestro Himno" recording, on which his group was just one of many featured artists.

"When you do something for the first time, you're always going to have differences of opinion," D'Olio said.

"But we haven't changed the music or the lyrics. Music is the same language for everybody in the world," he added.