January 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

Budget Issues Force Spy Satellites Into The Open
by Eugen Leitl 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/2343210 Posted by: timothy, on 2005-01-03 23:52:00 from the pretty-soon-we're-talking-real-money dept. Korsair25 points out this article about a [1]U.S. spy satellite program. "Quote: 'Over the decades, spying from space has always earned super-secret status. They are the black projects, fulfilling dark tasks and often bankrolled by blank check.' It also talks about some of the technology used to disguise or camouflage some of the operational satellites." [2]Click Here References 1. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/space/20050103/sc_space/anat… yofaspysatellite&e=1 2. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5671&alloc_id=12342&site_id=1&request_id=3463626… p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Re: [IP] Cell phones for eavesdropping
by Steve Thompson 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

--- "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> wrote: > >From: Gadi Evron <ge(a)linuxbox.org> > >Subject: Cell phones for eavesdropping - finally some public "chatter" > > Of course, the low-budget govt snoops go for the basestations > and landline links. Oh, I don't know about that. What would it cost a small to medium sized 'security firm' to hire a couple of decent EEs with decent RF expertise? Given five years and a decent budget, I bet that you could mock-up a system to capture cell-phone calls in progress so long as you were in range of the target's phone. I suspect that the protocols for setup and teardown of cell calls, not to mention the OOB handoff signals, aren't so complex that one couldn't intercept them in real-time with cheap off the shelf hardware. Hell, we all know that encryption, where it exists in the cell-net as a capability, has gone unused to this day. > The pending cell phone virus which calls 911 should be a real hoot. I bet that depends on whether the Java VM in modern phones is secure or not. > I wonder if cell virii can carry a voice payload which they can > inject as well. Or do we have to wait a few (viral) generations > for that? Depends on how much RAM you've got in your phone, I guess. The ABCs probably have the complete specifications for most phones, software and hardware, and so may be able to arbitrarily fuck with any given model to their heart's content -- given sufficient motivation, however you might characterise that... What's your threat model? Regards, Steve ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

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The Genius and Struggle of PayPal
by R.A. Hettinga 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

--- begin forwarded text

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California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On
by R.A. Hettinga 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04guns.html?th=&pagewanted=print…> The New York Times January 4, 2005 California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On By CAROLYN MARSHALL AN FRANCISCO, Jan. 3 - California has become the first state to ban a powerful .50-caliber long-range rifle that gun control advocates portray as a military firearm that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists bent on assassination or shooting down an airplane. Under the ban, which was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September and took effect on Jan. 1, it is now illegal to manufacture, sell, distribute or import a weapon known as the .50-caliber BMG, or Browning machine gun rifle, a single-shot weapon widely used not only by law enforcement officers and the military but, more recently, by civilian sport shooters as well. The new law limits possession to those who already own the rifle; they have until April 30, 2006, to register it or face a misdemeanor charge. Gun rights advocates fear that the California legislation will prompt other states to follow - similar efforts have been undertaken in New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and Virginia, but have failed - and enthusiasts are already devising ways to alter the gun and so circumvent the law without breaking it. Another result of the law is that in the weeks before it took effect, people rushing to buy the limited supplies of .50 BMG's descended on gun shops throughout California. Now that it is in force, some of the gun's out-of-state makers and distributors have threatened not to sell any of their firearms or services here. "We all think it's the first step toward banning sniper rifles," said Michael Fournier, owner of the Gun Exchange, a shop in San Jose. "They keep chipping away a little at a time. Eventually they'll try to get them all." A lawyer for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, a lobby that fought the legislation, said that for the first time gun control advocates had managed "to demonize" a firearm that gun proponents and lawmaker allies say has never been used to commit a crime in the United States. The lawyer, Chuck Michel, said the .50 BMG, which weighs 30 pounds and can cost $2,000 to $8,000, was typically bought by collectors, shooting range enthusiasts and skilled competitors. "Criminals don't carry around very pricey, very heavy rifles," Mr. Michel said. "They want handguns they can conceal." The .50 BMG rifle, patented in 1987 by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing of Murfreesboro, Tenn., was designed as a sniper weapon for law enforcement and the military; it was widely used by American troops during the Persian Gulf war of 1991. Manufacturers say the rifle is accurate at a range of up to 2,000 yards, more than a mile. It fires bullets five and a half inches long described as powerful enough to rip through armor, much less the thin aluminum skin that covers commercial airliners. "They can pierce the skin of an aircraft," said Daniel R. Vice, a lawyer with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a central supporter of the law. "It could be used to shoot down an airplane. And we certainly don't want to wait until a terrorist buys one before we ban it." The legislation's author, Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat from West Hollywood, concedes that street criminals would most likely view the .50 BMG as too much gun for the typical robbery or drive-by shooting. Rather, the law is intended to help keep the weapon out of the hands of "terrorists, general nut cases and survivalists," Mr. Koretz said, citing government reports suggesting that it had been used in assassinations overseas and that at least 25 had been bought by Osama bin Laden. Mr. Michel, the lawyer for the gun rights group, said that adopting the ban in the name of fighting terrorism was without merit. "The terrorist can get a nuclear dirty bomb or a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher," he said. "The .50-caliber is just a peashooter in comparison." But while there is no conclusive evidence that the .50 BMG rifle has ever been used in the United States to commit a felony, it has nonetheless been seized from American criminals' arsenals. A 1999 briefing paper from the General Accounting Office, predecessor of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, said, "We have established a nexus to terrorist groups, outlaw motorcycle gangs, international drug cartels, domestic drug dealers, religious cults, militia groups, potential assassins and violent criminals." A side effect of the new law is the ill will it has instilled toward Mr. Schwarzenegger among gun rights advocates. Many of them supported him for governor, and maintain that his signing the legislation was an act of betrayal. "You know what we call him?" said Jerry Sloan, assistant manager of Precision Arms, a shop in Escondido. "Benedict Arnold." Terri Carbaugh, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had made his position clear during his campaign. "It's a military-type weapon," Ms. Carbaugh said of the .50 BMG, "and he believes the gun presents a clear and present danger to the general public." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: How to Build a Global Internet Tsunami Warning System in a Month
by Major Variola (ret) 03 Jan '05

03 Jan '05

At 10:01 AM 1/3/05 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: ><http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041230.html> > >PBS: I, Cringely -- The Pulpit > >How to Build a Global Internet Tsunami Warning System in a Month 1. 150 K asians is nothing. 2. You will see > 10,000 K dead worldwide from the next H5N1 flu coming from your friendly local chinese duck/pig farmer. In under 6 months, which BTW is the time it takes to make a vaccine. 3. Homebrew warning systems will face the same problems as eg pro volcano warning systems: too many false alarms and no one cares. You might do better educating the beachfolk that when the water recedes and they can see the coral, they ought to stop gawking and run. But, hey, its a cool project, have fun.

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How to Build a Global Internet Tsunami Warning System in a Month
by R.A. Hettinga 03 Jan '05

03 Jan '05

<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041230.html> PBS: I, Cringely -- The Pulpit How to Build a Global Internet Tsunami Warning System in a Month By Robert X. Cringely A friend of mine is missing in southern Asia. She isn't missing in the sense that anyone saw her swept away by this week's horrible tsunami, but she and her entire family haven't been heard from, either so of course, I am worried. That worry makes real for me a disaster of such horrific proportions that without a personal connection, it simply can't be real to most of us. By the time all the bodies have been counted and estimated, probably 100,000 people will have died. If cholera follows, as it tends to in that part of the world, another 40,000 or more could follow. That's a lot of people, 140,000 -- enough people that we ought to do something to make sure it doesn't happen again. So of course, there is lots of talk about tsunami warning systems and global cooperation, but I think that's just going about solving the problem the wrong way. We don't need governments and huge sensor arrays to warn people on the beach about the next huge wave approaching at 400 miles-per-hour. Thanks to the Internet, we can probably do it by ourselves. Here's the problem with big multi-government warning systems. First, we have a disaster. Then, we have a conference on the disaster, then plans are proposed, money is appropriated, and three to five years later, a test system is ready. It isn't the final system, of course, but it still involves vast sensor arrays both above and below the surface of the ocean, satellite communication, and a big honking computer down in the bowels of the Department of Commerce or maybe at NASA. That's just the detection part. The warning part involves multilateral discussions with a dozen nations, a treaty, more satellite communication, several computer networks, several television and radio networks, and possibly a system of emergency transmitters. Ten years, a few million dollars and we're ready. We can't rely on governments to do this kind of work anymore. They just take too darned long and spend too much money for what you get. Besides, since governments are almost totally reactive, what they'll build is a warning system for precisely the tsunami we just had -- a tsunami bigger than any in that region since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. One could argue (and some experts probably will) that it might even be a waste of money to build a warning system for a disaster that might not happen for another 121 years. What we need is a tsunami warning system not just for parts of Asia, but for anywhere in the world that might be subject to such conditions. And that decision about what beaches to protect ought to come not from Washington, D.C., or Jakarta, or any other capital city, but from the beach people, themselves. If you are concerned about a giant tidal wave taking out your village, it might be a good idea to build your own warning system, you retired engineer, you Radio Shack manager, you harbor master, you radio amateur, you nerd with a suntan. It can be done. The Tsunami Warning System (TWS) in the Pacific Ocean shows us how such a warning system can be run with the cooperation of 26 countries. Maybe we can do the same thing, just without all that cooperation. TWS is based on crunching two kinds of data -- seismic activity and changes in sea level measured by tide gauges. Most tsunamis begin with an earthquake, the severity and epicenter of which can tell a lot about whether a tsunami is likely, how strong it will be, and in what direction it is likely to go. >From the TWS, the first warning is based purely on such seismic data. But once the big wave starts rolling it will have an effect on the level of the sea, itself, which is routinely monitored by weather stations of many types. This additional data gives a better idea of how bad the wave is really going to be, so in the TWS system, it is used to justify expanding the warning to other communities beyond those warned purely on the basis of seismic data. Depending on where the originating earthquake is, the tsunami can be minutes or hours from crashing into a beach. This week's wave took about 90 minutes to reach Sri Lanka, just over 600 miles from the epicenter. That not only means the wave was traveling at over 400 miles-per-hour, it also means that had a warning system been in place, there would easily have been time to get the people who were affected in Sri Lanka to higher ground. So to start, we need raw seismic data. If you take a look at the fourth of this week's links, you'll see that plenty of such data are available. Thanks to the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network, here is one place where you can find real time data from 199 seismographs around the world. There are also links to a dozen regional operations that consolidate such data. The data is available. Tide gauge data is available, too, though there is less of it, and aggregation will require more effort, so I say let's just stick to seismic data for our warning system. Here's where we need the help of a tsunami expert, someone who can help us calculate the size and direction of a likely tsunami based on the available seismic data. Fortunately, there has been quite a bit of work done in this area of study (see link #5), and appropriate computer codes that can be run on a personal computer either exist or can be derived, perhaps by reflexively evaluating seismic data from known tsunami events. But remember that what we care about here is not global tsunami warning but LOCAL tsunami warning (Is it going to hit MY beach?), so the required seismic data sources can pretty easily be limited to those with an uninterrupted aspect of the target beach, which means half a dozen seismographs, not 199. Since the basic question is fairly simple -- "Is my beach going to be hit by a destructive tsunami and when?" -- and the required data sources are limited, I figure we won't need a supercomputer. The seismographs are online, we gather the data using XML, continuously crunch it using the codes I am assuming already exist, then we need the warning, which I would flash on the screen of my PC down at the surf shop using a Javascript widget built with Konfabulator, the most beautiful widget generator of all. Looking just like a TV weather map, the widget would flash a warning and even include a countdown timer just like in the movies. You don't need an international consortium to build such a local tsunami warning system. You don't even need broadband. The data is available, processing power is abundant and cheap. With local effort, there is no reason why every populated beach on earth can't have a practical tsunami warning system up and running a month from now. That's Internet time for you, but in this case, its application can protect friends everywhere from senseless and easily avoidable death. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: SIGINT and COMSEC Discussion Group
by Nomen Nescio 02 Jan '05

02 Jan '05

On 2 Jan 2005 at 15:43, John Young wrote: > A. writes: > > I have just launched a new discussion group related to hardware > discussion for signal analysis and communications security systems: > > > http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sigint/ Why would we use a "groups beta" at google's when there's a big and proven yahoogroups that's been around for ages (under various names)?

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Coast Guard to Track Ships Using Buoys
by Eugen Leitl 02 Jan '05

02 Jan '05

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/01/182224 Posted by: michael, on 2005-01-01 20:19:00 from the feeling-safer-already dept. [1]nomrniceguy writes "The Coast Guard plans to use dozens of [2]buoys off the U.S. coast to extend the reach of a security system that monitors large vessels heading in and out of ports. The buoys are intended to extend the network's reach -- the Guard now receives the automated data only when a vessel is within about 25 miles of a port. The floating transmitters will relay the information from hundreds of miles off shore, from the middle of Lake Superior and off coastlines from Alaska to Maine." [3]Click Here References 1. http://www.igc.org/jobs.html 2. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/30/port.security.ap/index.html 3. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5717&alloc_id=12468&site_id=1&request_id=4003996… p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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SIGINT and COMSEC Discussion Group
by John Young 02 Jan '05

02 Jan '05

A. writes: I have just launched a new discussion group related to hardware discussion for signal analysis and communications security systems: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sigint/

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Talking Back to Power: China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence
by Neil Johnson 02 Jan '05

02 Jan '05

I'm not really RAH, but I play him on cypherpunks ;-) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/international/asia/31china.html? ex=1105532792&ei=1&en=61c003ece2c2eadb The Great Divide | Talking Back to Power: China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence December 31, 2004 By JOSEPH KAHN WANZHOU, China, Dec. 24 - The encounter, at first, seemed purely pedestrian. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a sidewalk. The man's bag brushed the woman's pants leg, leaving a trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued. Easily forgettable, except that one of the men, Yu Jikui, was a lowly porter. The other, Hu Quanzong, boasted that he was a ranking government official. Mr. Hu beat Mr. Yu using the porter's own carrying stick, then threatened to have him killed. For Wanzhou, a Yangtze River port city, the script was incendiary. Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall. Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected. "People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have enough to eat," said Mr. Yu, reflecting on the uprising that made him an instant proletarian hero - and later forced him into seclusion. "Our society has a short fuse, just waiting for a spark." Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control. China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity labor movement. Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, local expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration, unpaid wages or police killings. Yet several mass protests, like the one in Wanzhou, show how people with different causes can seize an opportunity to press their grievances together. The police recently arrested several advocates of peasant rights suspected of helping to coordinate protest activities nationally. Those are worrying signs for the one-party state, reflexively wary of even the hint of organized opposition. Wang Jian, a researcher at the Communist Party's training academy in Changchun, in northeast China, said the number and scale of protests had been rising because of "frictions and even violent conflicts between different interest groups" in China's quasi market economy. "These mass incidents have seriously harmed the country's social order and weakened government authority, with destructive consequences domestically and abroad," Mr. Wang wrote in a recent study. China's top leaders said after their annual planning session in September that the "life and death of the party" rests on "improving governance," which they define as making party officials less corrupt and more responsive to public concerns. But the only accessible outlet for farmers and workers to complain is the network of petition and appeals offices, a legacy of imperial rule. A new survey by Yu Jianrong, a leading sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, found that petitions to the central government had increased 46 percent in 2003 from the year before, but that only two-hundredths of 1 percent of those who used the system said it worked. Last month, as many as 100,000 farmers in Sichuan Province, frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that claimed their land, took matters into their own hands. They seized Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the dam site for days. It took 10,000 paramilitary troops to quell the unrest. Also in November, in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, in central China, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers attacked a police station after a traffic dispute. Days later, in Guangdong Province, in the far south, riots erupted and a toll booth was burned down after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use a bridge. In mid-December, a village filled with migrant workers in Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after the police caught a 15-year-old migrant stealing a bicycle and beat him to death. Up to 50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported. Wanzhou officials initially treated their riot in October as a fluke. They ordered Mr. Hu to declare on television that he is a fruit vendor, not a public official, and that his confrontation with Mr. Yu was a mistake. The police arrested a dozen people and declared social order restored. But the uprising alarmed Beijing, which told local officials they would be sacked if they failed to prevent recurrences, according to Chinese journalists briefed on the matter. Luo Gan, the member of the Politburo Standing Committee who is in charge of law and order, issued national guidelines warning that "sudden mass incidents" were increasing and calling for tighter police measures. More than a dozen people interviewed in Wanzhou, part of Chongqing Municipality, described the city as tense. All said that they still believed that Mr. Hu was indeed an official and that the government concocted a cover story to calm things down. They say the anger excited by the riot awaits only a new affront. The Chance Encounter Like many farmers in the steeply graded hills along the Yangtze, Mr. Yu, 57, supplements his income hauling loads up and down city roads - grain, fertilizer, air conditioners, anything that he can balance on a bamboo pole and hoist on his slender shoulder. Sweaty and dirty, porters put their low-paying profession on parade. They are often referred to simply as bian dan, or pole men. Mr. Yu's lot is better than some others. He has another sideline collecting hair cuttings off the floors of beauty salons and barber shops, packing them in big burlap bags and selling them to wig-makers down south. On Oct. 18, he spent several hours collecting hair from upscale salons along Baiyan Road, a busy shopping street that runs near the government square downtown. His load was light - two bags of loose locks - and he scurried down the sidewalk to lunch. "Hey, pole man, you got dirt all over my pants!" he heard a woman shout. When he turned to face her, the man by her side, Mr. Hu, was glaring at him. "What are you looking at, bumpkin?" Mr. Yu recalls Mr. Hu saying. Mr. Yu is mild mannered, with a slightly raffish grin stained yellow from chain smoking. Mr. Hu, wearing a coat and tie and leather shoes, looked like he might be important. Mr. Yu said he should have let the moment pass. He did not. "I work like this so that my daughter and son can dress better than I do, so don't look down on me," he recalled saying. Then he added, "I sell my strength just as a prostitute sells her body." Mr. Yu said he was drawing a general comparison. Mr. Hu and his young wife, Zeng Qingrong, apparently thought he had insinuated something else. She jerked his shirt collar and slapped his ear. Mr. Hu picked up Mr. Yu's fallen pole and struck him in the legs and back repeatedly. Perhaps for the benefit of the crowd, Mr. Hu shouted that it was Mr. Yu, sprawled on the pavement, who was in big trouble. "I'm a public official," Mr. Hu said, according to Mr. Yu and other eyewitnesses. "If this guy causes me more problems, I'll pay 20,000 kuai" - about $2,500 - "and have him knocked off." Those words never appeared in the state-controlled media. But is difficult to find anyone in Wanzhou today who has not heard some version of Mr. Hu's bluster: The putative official - he has been identified in the rumor mill as the deputy chief of the local land bureau - had boasted that he could have a porter killed for $2,500. It was a call to arms. Mr. Hu's threat, spread by mobile phones, text messages and the swelling crowd, encapsulated a thousand bitter grievances. "I heard him say those exact words," said Wen Jiabao, another porter who says he witnessed the confrontation. "It proves that it's better to be rich than poor, but that being an official is even better than being rich." Xiang Lin, a 18-year-old auto mechanic, had seen China's rising wealth when he worked near Shanghai. But when he returned home to Wanzhou, he felt frustrated that his plan to open a repair shop foundered. He was drawn downtown by the excitement. "Don't officials realize that we would not have any economic development in Wanzhou without the porters?" Mr. Xiang asked. Cai Shizhong, a taxi driver, was angered when the authorities created a company to control taxi licenses, which he says cost him thousands of dollars but brought no benefits. The police also fine taxi drivers left and right, he said. "If you drive a private car, they leave you alone because you might be important," Mr. Cai said. "If you drive a taxi, they find any excuse to take your money." Peng Daosheng's home was flooded by the rising reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam. He was supposed to receive $4,000 in compensation as well as a new home. But his new apartment is smaller and less well located, and the cash never arrived. "The officials take all the money for themselves," said Mr. Peng, who spent eight hours protesting that night. "I guess that's why that guy had $2,500 to kill someone." It took the police more than four hours to remove Mr. Hu and Mr. Yu from the scene. The crowd surrounded police cars and refused to budge, afraid the police would cover up the beating, and even punish Mr. Yu. "People knew the matter would never be resolved fairly behind closed doors," Mr. Yu said. Even after the police formed a cordon around two cars - one for Mr. Hu and his wife, another for Mr. Yu - the crowd smashed the windows of the car carrying the couple. It was nearly 5 p.m. before the vehicles crawled through the assembled masses. A Loss of Control The police may have hoped that removing the main actors from the scene would defuse the tension. Instead, the crowd rampaged. At 6 p.m., a police van was surrounded and the policeman inside was beaten with bricks. Seven or eight people tipped the car over, stuffed toilet paper into the gas tank and set it ablaze, according to witnesses and a police report. When a fire truck arrived, the fire fighters were forced out and their truck commandeered. A driver smashed it into brick wall, then backed up and repeated the move to render the truck immobile. "They lost control at once," recalled Mr. Cai, the taxi driver, who wandered through the crowd that day. "Suddenly the police were nobody and the people were in charge." The local government never published an estimate of how many people took part in the protest. But unofficial estimates by Chinese journalists on the scene ranged from 30,000 to 70,000, enough to stop all traffic downtown and fill the government square. By 8 p.m., the rally focused on the 20-story headquarters of the Wanzhou District Government, with its blue-tinted windows and imposing terrace facing the square. The crowd chanted, "Hand over the assassin!" Riot-police officers in full protective gear - but carrying no guns - held the terrace. Officials with loudspeakers urged the crowd to disperse, promising that the incident would be handed according to law. But the mob now followed its own law. An assembly line formed from a nearby construction site. Concrete building slabs were ferried along the line, then shattered with sledgehammers to make projectiles. Front-line rioters hurled the rocks at the police - tentatively at first, then in volleys. Under the barrage, the police retreated. Protesters charged the terrace, shattered the windows and doors of government headquarters and surged inside. Official documents were scattered. Protesters dumped computers and office furniture off the terrace. Soon, a raging fire illuminated the square with its flickering orange glow. Li Jian, 22, took part in the plunder. A young peasant, he had found a city job as a short-order cook. But he longed to study computers, said his father, Li Wanfa. The family bought an old computer keyboard so the young man could learn typing. "He wanted to go to high school but the school said his cultural level was not high enough," Mr. Li said. "They said a country boy like him should be a cook." The police arrested young Mr. Li scurrying through the melee with a Legend-brand computer that belonged to the government, according to an arrest notice. Yet even at the height of the incident, rioters set limits. They did not attack any of the restaurants or department stores along the government square, focusing their wrath on symbols of official power. By midnight, the crowd dwindled on its own. When paramilitary troops finally arrived on the scene after 3 a.m., there were only a few thousand hard-core protesters left. "Most people went home," said Mr. Peng, the man whose home had been flooded by the dam. "But the armed police were fierce. They beat you even if you kneeled down before them." The Tensions Persist The local government praised its own handling of the riot. An assessment published three days afterward in The Three Gorges City News, the daily paper of the Wanzhou Communist Party, also declared the uprising had no lasting ramifications. "The district government displayed its strong governing ability at a crucial moment," the report said. "This incident was caused by a handful of agitators with ulterior motives who whipped up a street-side dispute into a mass riot." The uprising did dissipate as quickly as it emerged. Baiyan Road now bustles with afternoon shoppers. After work, dancers bundled against the damp chill use government square as an outdoor ballroom, a synthesized two-step beat filling the night air. Yet the underlying tensions did not disappear. When the Wan Min Cotton Textile Factory declared bankruptcy in mid-December, scores of policemen occupied the factory grounds to prevent a riot. The next day, a handful of workers from the factor went to city hall to protest. Several hundred uniformed police surrounded them. Mr. Xiang, the auto mechanic, was arrested for throwing stones and taken into custody. One day, returning from the cold showers inmates were required to take in the unheated jail, guards told him to kneel. One elbowed him in the back and several others kicked him in the gut. As he lay prostrate, a prison supervisor said: "Nothing happened to you here, did it? You're a smart kid." He could not eat for two days. "We were all brothers inside," he said of his fellow detainees. "The officials despise the ordinary people and are not afraid to bully them." Then there's Mr. Yu. He missed the riot that occurred in his name, but has been under pressure ever since. The government kept him isolated in a hospital for nearly two weeks, even though bruises on his legs and the stitches he needed above his eye had healed. His daughter and son were told to take a vacation, paid by the government, to avoid contact with the news media. "They told us not to talk or it would hurt the city," Mr. Yu said in his first interview. Yet he said what really shook him was the reaction to the statement he made to Wanzhou television on Oct. 20, two days after the riot. The government told him to appear - he was still under guard - and had prepared questions in advance. "They told me to emphasize the importance of law and order," he said. "I was told just to answer the questions and not to say anything else." What he said on the evening news sounded innocuous enough. "Let this be handled by law," Mr. Yu told viewers. "Everyone should stay at home." So he was unprepared for the backlash. Relatives of those arrested criticized him for propagandizing for the government, saying their kin felt betrayed. Neighbors warned him not to plant rice this year because his enemies would just rip it out. His wife says she wants to move because she has heard too many threats. Mr. Yu is understandably confused. "First an official tries to break my legs because I am a dirty porter," he said. "Now the common people want to break my legs because I spoke for the government." Chris Buckley contributed reporting for this article.

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