"If we had a Sept. 11 every year, then citizens, regardless of the country, would doubtless be ready to abdicate a good portion of their rights in this area," said French lawmaker Alain Marsaud, a former anti-terror investigator.

Marsaud, other experts and European Union officials said they were not aware of a European equivalent of the secret telephone database put together by the National Security Agency. The program was disclosed last week by USA Today newspaper, which said the NSA has records of all calls made by customers of AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

"German legislation does not allow for this," said Andreas Middel of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, Europe's largest phone operator. While the company does - with a court order - turn over to law enforcement agencies data such as numbers called and the length of calls, it does not provide billing information for more general purposes, he said.

Jan Sjoberg of TeliaSonera, the Nordic region's largest telecommunications operator, said: "There is nothing today that indicates that this kind of thing is going on, either in Sweden or elsewhere in Europe."

The Bush administration has declined to specify how the data is being used; President Bush reiterated Tuesday the government was not eavesdropping on Americans.

Sandra Bell, who spent two decades working on counterterrorism technology for Britain's Ministry of Defense, said she suspects the NSA is building a detailed picture of what constitutes normal phone traffic. That way, spikes in calls to places like Afghanistan or Pakistan, for example, could be easier to spot, perhaps flagging terrorist activity, she said.

Bell likened it to a bank's ability to track credit card use, enabling them to follow up any unusual purchase to ask if a card had been stolen.

"Technology is going at such a pace ... we have to give up a little bit of privacy in order to provide security," said Bell, who now works for a British security think tank.

"If they are doing what I think they are doing, then I guess my answer is: 'Why on earth wasn't this done a long time ago?'" Bell said. "If it is something more sinister then, no, I wouldn't like it."

The pendulum swung toward more extensive electronic surveillance in Europe after deadly transit bombings in Madrid and London.

EU governments and the EU parliament this year approved legislation requiring telecommunications companies to retain phone data and Internet logs for a minimum of six months for possible use in terrorism and serious crime investigations.

The Dutch secret service has gained vast powers. In 2004, the government passed measures that lowered the threshold for bugging and surveillance. A turning point in Dutch public attitudes came with the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist.

France also has expanded the possible use of videosurveillance and phone and Internet data, despite previous wiretapping abuses. President Francois Mitterrand eavesdropped in the 1980s on lawyers, politicians, journalists and celebrities. A Paris court last November convicted seven people of invasion of privacy for their role in the operation.

In Italy, a Justice Ministry report said the number of authorized wiretaps more than tripled from 32,000 in 2001 to 106,000 last year. Italian phone companies are obliged to keep phone records for at least five years and Internet records for at least one year - the longest of any of the EU's 25 member nations, according to Italy's privacy authority.

That is not a problem for Carolina Lio, a university student from Bologna. "As long as there isn't a CCTV camera in my house, I am not worried," she said. "I know the surveillance is not directed against me, but rather to protect me."

But others warn the delicate balance between security and freedom is being lost.

"Politicians have tapped into this mood of fear," said British expert Ian Leigh.

"A lot of the safeguards that were erected, first of all in the U.S. in the 1970s, and then in other countries in the '80s and '90s following well-documented abuses have been taken down to some degree to fight the war on terror," he said. "It's likely that this will store up problems for the future."

Commerce dropped by 90 percent in Sao Paulo on Monday, according to a business group. Bus service ground to a halt.

Since Friday, at least 40 police officers, 71 suspected assailants and four passersby have been killed in some 250 reported attacks. In addition, bodies of 18 inmates were found in a prison.

Residents cautiously began returning to work Tuesday and bus service was restored, albeit with police protection.

Two more buses were attacked Tuesday, although police were not clear whether gang members were responsible.

The rest of the violence has been blamed on First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, the largest criminal gang in Sao Paulo state. It has a massive base in prisons.

The PCC launched the attacks on police Friday in retaliation for the transfer of its members to maximum-security prisons, authorities said.

Police said gang leaders used cell phones from inside the prisons to direct the unrest.

Order was restored in 73 prisons hit by gang-launched uprisings late Monday, after prison officials negotiated the release of 195 hostages late Monday.

Local media reported that jailed PCC leader Marcos Cacho, known as "Marcola," had met government officials in prison to reach a negotiated settlement, but officials denied negotiations had taken place.

"There has been no dialogue with the (gang) leaders to find an accord," state Governor Claudio Lembo said.

The head of the prison system, Nagashi Furukawa, told reporters Tuesday that he had allowed a lawyer to visit Marcola on Sunday and report that the gang leader had not been harmed.

In return the criminals on the street "sought to stop what they were doing," he said.

Police chief Marco Desgualdo also denied that an agreement was reached with the gang.

"You can't have agreements with criminals," he said, assuring that the bloody offensive was moving toward "stabilization" and "neutralization".

Sao Paulo residents cautiously returned to work Tuesday, although the megalopolis lacked its usual bustle.

Offices were deserted Monday when workers left early fearing rumors spread via e-mail of an imminent gang attack. Several schools and universities remained closed Tuesday.

On Monday, bus service ground to a halt and restaurants and shops also shut down after the gang attacked civilian targets, torching scores of buses and hurling Molotov cocktails at banks.

"People are scared, and those who could avoid work did not go," said a bus company employee.

"The gangsters do what they want, you would think this is
Iraq," said Bety, an east Sao Paulo resident. "It's terrifying."

The PCC first emerged in prisons in the 1990s and was responsible for uprisings in 20 penitentiaries in February 2001. In November 2003, it launched attacks on security forces that left 11 officers and seven gang members dead.

A local interior ministry spokesman, Akhmed Aushev, and initial Russian media reports said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, but officials later backed away from that hypothesis and said the car bomb may have been detonated by remote control.

"In all probability, there was no one inside the car that exploded," Dmitry Guruliyov, the deputy prosecutor for Ingushetia, told AFP by telephone.

The explosion had a force equivalent to around 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of TNT, Guruliyov said.

Police said a manhunt was under way in Ingushetia to catch the perpetrators of the attack, but did not specify what leads they were pursuing.

The independent Russian radio station Echo Moscow evoked the possibility that Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev may have been directly involved in the planning of Wednesday's attack, which coincided with the slaying of a prison official in another Russian Caucasus republic.

An Internet website regularly used by Chechen rebels gave an account of a meeting earlier this week in one of Russia's provinces in the North Caucasus among several people it described as rebel commanders, and said Basayev also took part in the meeting.

"Shamil Basayev may have had a role in today's terrorist attack in Ingushetia," Echo Moscow said.

The Chechen rebel website, www.kavkazcenter.com, said the "commander" of the pro-Chechen rebels in Ingushetia, Yevloyev Magomed, was among those who participated in the meeting with Basayev. Magomed has been linked to other attacks on Russian officials in Ingushetia.

Attacks targeting Russian law enforcement officials are a frequent occurrence in Ingushetia, which borders
Chechnya and where clashes between police and pro-Chechen fighters take place regularly.

In June 2004, several hundred rebels led by Basayev launched a large-scale assault on Russian government installations in Nazran, leaving dozens of people dead, most of them police officers, and seizing an arsenal of weapons.

Since then, there has been a steady stream of attacks against Russian officials and security forces in Ingushetia, Dagestan and other provinces in the North Caucasus near Chechnya.

Clashes between rebels and Russian forces in Chechnya itself continue to claim lives on a near-daily basis.

Russian forces are also regularly shown on state television in confrontations with "fighters" who usually number no more than two or three people holed up in an apartment building that is surrounded by special forces and blasted until the fighters are killed.

The prison official killed Wednesday in the Russian Caucasus province of Karachai-Cherkessia was identified by Russian news agencies as Khasan Zhanakayev. He died on the scene after gunmen opened fire on him from a car, the reports said.

According to witnesses, the lawyer shouted, "Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest). His anger will be upon you!"

At least one of the judges received life-threatening wounds and was in surgery, according to Ugur Erdener, the Director of Hacettepe Hospital.

The court had come under widespread criticism for a recent ruling that said public employees and teachers cannot wear headscarves while at work.

Tansel Colasan, deputy head of the administrative court, the Council of State, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying the attacker shouted, "I am the soldier of God," and said he was carrying out the attack to protest the court decision on headscarves.

"This attack will go into the history of the republic as a dark stain," President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said in a statement condemning the attack, according to AP.

"These attacks will never reach their goal," Sezer said, adding that the justice system would not be intimidated and would fulfill its duty with "loyalty to the secular and democratic republic."

The country's staunchly secular military also denounced the shooting. "We condemn this vile attack with hate," the General Staff said in a statement.

Turkey, a Muslim country, is a largely secular society and many citizens have long been suspicious of fundamentalist Islam.

However, there are many traditional Muslims in the country, and many women don traditional religious attire.