NADRA app lets dead cancel their own ID, Here’s how

ISLAMABAD: The National Database and Registration Authority’s (NADRA) mobile application contains an ambiguous feature that seems to enable deceased people to cancel their identity cards, somehow.

Under the application’s “Cancel Identity Due to Death” function, applicants are given two choices: one for families of the deceased, and another titled “Myself.” Choosing the second option strangely guides the applicant through a facial recognition “liveness check,” a procedure meant to verify that the individual is physically alive and also the one in the official record.

In some way, a dead individual is supposed to log in to his or her NADRA app, initiate an application via the “myself” option, and even finish a liveness check via facial recognition.

Upon being contacted for an explanation, a NADRA official explained that the “Cancel Identity Due to Death” facility is only meant to be used by the kin of the deceased. However, the official did not explain why the app’s design gives the option of “myself” for the dead person, nor does it require a liveness test of a person presumed dead.

This is one more instance of faulty design and management in important government mobile apps, something that afflicts many such apps in Pakistan, whether government or not.

As of today, NADRA has not issued any reason for the seeming contradiction, and there are unanswered questions regarding whether the feature is a technical error, a labeling mistake, or an uncorrected design flaw in the app.