Inside Uzbekistan's Nationwide License Plate Surveillance System (techcrunch.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Across Uzbekistan, a network of about a hundred 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 seatbelts, 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 Chirchiq, through the capital Tashkent, and in the nearby settlement of Eshonguzar, 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 Anurag 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 system has been public, but artifacts from the system show that its database was set up in September 2024, and traffic monitoring began in mid-2025. The exposure offers a rare glimpse into how such national license plate surveillance systems work, the data they collect, and how they can be used to track the whereabouts of any one of the millions of people across an entire country. The lapse also reveals the security and privacy risks associated with the mass monitoring of vehicles and their owners, at a time when the United States is building up its nationwide array of license plate readers, many of which are provided by surveillance giant Flock.
Security researcher Anurag 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 system has been public, but artifacts from the system show that its database was set up in September 2024, and traffic monitoring began in mid-2025. The exposure offers a rare glimpse into how such national license plate surveillance systems work, the data they collect, and how they can be used to track the whereabouts of any one of the millions of people across an entire country. The lapse also reveals the security and privacy risks associated with the mass monitoring of vehicles and their owners, at a time when the United States is building up its nationwide array of license plate readers, many of which are provided by surveillance giant Flock.
Re: (Score:2)
Has a national license plate monitoring system. A little bit surprised to find out America has one but given who is president not all that much.
You see that collection of numbers and letters on your license plate? Licensing is tracking. Ever wonder what the officer is doing when he seems to be taking forever after you got caught speeding? Running your license plate. Do you have any warrants, might the vehicle be stolen, unpaid tickets?
, Unless you are a sovereign citizen, I have some strong suspicions you might be. Maybe a 5th grader trying to be a troll, But congratulations, you took the frist psot to turn it into another of your America hating
Creepy (Score:3)
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I'm all for using such systems to catch out those who are uninsured, no tax, no licence but logging movement just feels so intrusive and far beyond any need. Once you've been checked and found to be clean that should be the limit and you're deleted until the next time.
Such systems can and will be abused whenever they're in place.
Furthermore, despite supposed laws to the contrary, police departments aren't audited enough to feel they even have to get close to complying with destroying unnecessary LPR data.
It's a privacy and surveillance nightmare people have absolutely no idea about, and it's already here.
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It would be nice if data would be deleted before it left the LPR, if it was considered irrelevent, or perhaps a series of encryption keys used so one body which requires judges to "turn their keys" to allow access be used, while LPR output fitting another criteria of vehicles which are not permitted on the road would be allowed to be accessed with just the LEOs' keys. In any case, all data is tagged with an expiration date, where if there isn't an explicit legal hold, it gets flushed, on an encryption key
Open to the internet? That's Flocked up. (Score:2)
And totally unsurprising.
Fun part (Score:5, Interesting)
For those not in the know, Soviet -stans are somewhat unique in that they came in a region of islamic parts of Silk Road that were utterly primitive when Soviets rolled in. So primitive that they still had the early farming period style division between peoples. They had fairly modern islamic elite town dwellers, rural farmers and finally primitive nomads. Three peoples that didn't really meet outside raids/enslavement/murder in spite of living next to one another. Three life styles locked in constant existential conflict with two others.
So when Soviets arrived, these peoples fought each other in blood feuds going back millenia all the time. It was a stereotypical hell hole of primitive savagery.
So Soviets tried to civilize these people by giving them an idea of Communist man and a Communist state. It worked, more or less. Nomads were defined as "Kyrgyz" by Soviets and what they made into their nation is hilarious in that it's main two cities are mainly populated by other peoples because... well primitive nomads. They don't do the whole "city living" thing. They raid cities.
But Uzbeks are by far the best adapted ones. They were the agriculturalists in an incredibly fertile Ferghana valley. But to survive between constantly marauding and slaving nomads running around the edges of their valley and islamic township elites raping and enslaving from the other side, they had to create a hilariously insular and brutal culture.
They have a rather unique way of dealing with dissent in that they are to my knowledge the only people outside Africa who are known to have boiled people alive/drowned people in scalding water (reports differ on specifics) for political disagreements this century. This is not a too unusual thing in the Black Magic Belt of Africa where doing fucked up shit to people is a norm, but quite rare in Africa outside of it and unheard of outside Africa. Except Uzbekistan.
So yeah, monitoring license plates is not really relevant or interesting in comparison.
Turkmen were the islamic elites for those wondering, and they have their own -stan too. Led by a proper Caliph at this point in all but name, as an Islamic nation should be. That man makes Kim family look like paragons of liberalism and democracy. Fourth and final -stan being by far the largest, and something of an experiment in integrating everyone into a Russian society, which is why it's fundamentally two states in one and during early USSR was a part of Russian Federation. But it never really integrated. Its north is basically a state for Central Asian Russians, whereas south has a mix of all three original groups separated by a desert from the north.
To give you an idea of just how authoritarian post-Soviet -stans are, the most metropolitan, most Europeanized one with significant Russian population in the north? When its first president for life died, they renamed the capital after him. And that is indeed by far the most liberal of them.
P.S. It's worth noting that Turkmenistan's Berdimuhamedow is a living meme for this unironic publicity stunts, and a hilariously entertaining man to follow. Between having his government all do group aerobics to rebuilding his capital in white only because that's his lucky color, to doing rap songs with his grandson to thundering applause of entire theaters that would make Stalin himself blush, all of his horse related antics and his current push to become a "spiritual leader of the nation" he's an amazing source of laughs if you're a Westerner. I really recommend "chronicles of Turkmenistan", they have an amazing youtube channel where they just collect clips from Turkmenistan's national TV and cut them with hilarious music into short videos.
https://en.hronikatm.com/about... [hronikatm.com]
(Site may have an expired certificate, they don't maintain it all that well).
Turkistan (Score:2)
One thing successfully done first by the Romanovs, and after them, the Soviets, was defanging Turkistan. In medieval times, that region, rather than Arabia, was jihad central of the world. Had various empires - Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, Khwarezmids, Timurides, Mughals that started from one place or the other in the region - Ghazni, Merw, Ghowr, Gurganj, Buqhara, Samarqand, Kabul.... Today, those cities are scattered b/w Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but at that time, they were all part of an amorp
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Or, the Turkmen cult of personality didn't reduce after Niyazov. When Arkadag took over, it grew to levels that make Kims look like paragons of liberalism. You know the whole "clap until eldest pass out, or you get taken out?" Or how it used to be normal for everyone in Kim's entourage to hold a notebook and a pen when Kim speaks no matter where he goes, so it can be written down?
They do all that, but way harder.
It's only after Arkadag left official levers of powers to his son (who's always gloom and bored
Why would they even need LPR cameras? (Score:4, Informative)
The premise of this article makes no sense at all. Why would Uzbekistan need LPR cameras to track citizens when everyone is already carrying personal tracking devices in the form of smartphones? And unlike an LPR camera that only records when your vehicle is on the road, a smartphone reveals your personal location. Why even bother to query LPR camera records when the police can just ping the local cell phone provider and learn exactly where you are and where you have been for several months?
I see this same bizarre doublethink in my own city, where critics of LPR cameras decry their deployment while simultaneously recommending that everyone should be riding mass transit in the first place, where all passengers are placed under constant video and audio surveillance.
If you truly hate government surveillance, why do you tolerate it in mass transit? Read a little about the capabilities of the systems installed and maintained by March Networks in mass transit systems. LPR cameras are a joke compared to what our government leaders subject us to when we hop on a bus or a subway.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The premise of this article makes no sense at all. Why would Uzbekistan need LPR cameras to track citizens when everyone is already carrying personal tracking devices in the form of smartphones?
You might not believe this, but some people are capable of leaving their home with their smartphone turned off or left behind. I personally don't need a smartphone to drive, purchase groceries, prove my insurance or drivers license, read a menu, or find an address. The only two applications I don't have a better alternative ready to use are the flashlight and occasionally the camera.
Any tracking system that can be circumvented by simply leaving the tracking device home isn't worth much.
When Society Itself, Destroys Privacy. (Score:2)
Any tracking system that can be circumvented by simply leaving the tracking device home isn't worth much.
Any society that makes electronically silent movement appear not just as an anomaly but a come-look-at-me attraction, destroys any such “defense”.
If it’s not your phone, it’ll soon be your car. If it’s not your car, it’ll soon be GPS-enabled plate itself. While the rest of the fixed cameras and drone network of flying cameras is legalized and deployed under the guise of “safety”.
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Why would Uzbekistan need LPR cameras to track citizens when everyone is already carrying personal tracking devices in the form of smartphones?
It turns out there's a big difference between you having data, and some US company having data. The government isn't tracking your phone. Private companies are. Hence LPR.
Also LPRs used for tracking are far from a Uzbekistan only thing.
If you truly hate government surveillance, why do you tolerate it in mass transit?
You're begging the question. Where does the article talk about hating it? It just describes it, and what's an individual to do? Not drive, or take public transport?
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You're begging the question. Where does the article talk about hating it? It just describes it, and what's an individual to do? Not drive, or take public transport?
The entire existence of license plates on vehicles is exactly to track them.
It is a matter of the available granularity of the time vehicle licensing was first implementing and today. If you are stopped by law enforcement, they run your plates to check on multiple things. Tracking.
Mot much need to plant a device on your car - If you have a cell phone, you are being tracked. The cell system is based on locating your phone. The phone towers have logs. You don't even have to be talking.
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As an example of how this can turn into a nightmare, consider Sacramento California's vacuuming of power data for possible pot growing. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com] Just because someone was using a odd amount of power, a sheriff shows up at your door guns drawn with a search warran
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You're right, there's something magical about a cell phone provider that prevents an authoritarian government from simply demanding access to all location data at any time. Oh, wait ... there isn't.
My point being that if an authoritarian government does want to track everyone's location, LPR cameras would be only one tool in a much larger
Re: (Score:2)
The premise of this article makes no sense at all. Why would Uzbekistan need LPR cameras to track citizens when everyone is already carrying personal tracking devices in the form of smartphones? And unlike an LPR camera that only records when your vehicle is on the road, a smartphone reveals your personal location. Why even bother to query LPR camera records when the police can just ping the local cell phone provider and learn exactly where you are and where you have been for several months?
I see this same bizarre doublethink in my own city, where critics of LPR cameras decry their deployment while simultaneously recommending that everyone should be riding mass transit in the first place, where all passengers are placed under constant video and audio surveillance.
If you truly hate government surveillance, why do you tolerate it in mass transit? Read a little about the capabilities of the systems installed and maintained by March Networks in mass transit systems. LPR cameras are a joke compared to what our government leaders subject us to when we hop on a bus or a subway.
I hear what you're saying but I think there's a false dichotomy: that one thing is bad does not preclude another being bad.
What I mean is that I agree that cell phone tracking is a problem. A big one. Government / LEO shouldn't have access to that data except in very specific, very clear circumstances. It shouldn't be "who was in the area when this random car was stolen" or "where was the woman I'm stalking last night?" Maybe in cases like... a school shooting and the suspect got away, but you think y
\o/ (Score:2)
This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers [youtube.com]
You meant to say Unites States (Score:2)