Pakistan ID authority shares data of 4K wanted people for biometric matching

NADRA has shared the images of more than 4,000 wanted individuals with a public safety body to enable biometric matching so they can be apprehended, Dawn reports.

Safe City Islamabad requested high-resolution images of people including criminals and terrorists three times, beginning in October, Dawn writes. The requests relate to people wanted for serious crimes in Islamabad or the neighboring provinces. The wanted individuals also include ‘proclaimed offenders,’ who are people who have been ruled by a court to be avoiding the execution of a warrant.

High resolution photos are needed to enable accurate enough matches with the city’s facial recognition system to support arrests, according to the report.

NADRA Chairman Tariq Malik says a special request to share the personal data was received by the agency a month ago, but had to carry out an evaluation, obtain a legal opinion, and get assurances that the data will not be misused.

“As the Nadra chairman, it’s my responsibility to police the police on behalf of the citizens when it comes to protecting their identity credentials. We have completed all required approvals and data of criminals and proclaimed offenders is being shared today,” Malik says, as quoted by Dawn.

Across the border in India, the digital ID authority has denied the use of Aadhaar biometrics by police, though a high court justice also proposed last year that police could share their data to provide a match instead.

Article Topics

biometric matching  |  criminal ID  |  data sharing  |  face photo  |  facial recognition  |  NADRA  |  Pakistan