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Inside Uzbekistan's nationwide license plate surveillance system.

I'm Amaran Sheikh and happy holidays, folks.

This is a TechCrunch, Daily Crunch special.

Across Uzbekistan, a network of about 100 banks of high-resolution roadside cameras

continuously scan vehicles license plates

and their occupants, sometimes thousands a day, looking for potential traffic violations.

Cars running red lights, drivers not wearing their seatbelt, and unlicensed vehicles

driving at night, to name a few. The driver of one of the most surveilled vehicles

in the system was tracked over six months as he traveled between the eastern city of Chirchik

through the capital, Teshkent, and in the nearby settlement of Eshen Gazar, often multiple times a week.

We know this because the country's sprawling license plate tracking surveillance

system has been left exposed to the internet. Security researcher Anarug Sen, who discovered

the security lapse, found the license plate surveillance system exposed online without a password,

allowing anyone access to the data within. It's not clear how long the surveillance

...