Written question asked by Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 6 July 2020, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Monday, 20 July 2020. It was answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Conservative) on Monday, 20 July 2020 on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Bahrain: Coronavirus

Question: To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) what assessment they have made of the call by Amnesty International on 16 June for Bahrain to halt the use of its ‘Bahrain BeAware’ contact tracing application; and (2) what representations they intend to make to the government of Bahrain to (a) remind it of its obligations under Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and (b) encourage that government to introduce safeguards to ensure the (i) anonymity of ‘Bahrain BeAware’ user data, and (ii) destruction of digital records at regular intervals.

Answer: The Bahrain BeAware application was introduced by the Bahraini government to advance contact tracing efforts and save lives during the Covid-19 emergency as part of its Trace, Test and Treat strategy which has received praise from the World Health Organization (WHO). We understand that downloading the application and registration as a user is optional entirely voluntary. Users not in quarantine or mandatory self-isolation can uninstall the application at any time. All users are informed of its use of GPS software before downloading. The Government of Bahrain have been clear in their assurances of user privacy through a fully encrypted and automated process. , Any Location data t older than 6 weeks is deleted automatically from the system. Users can also request that their data is deleted from the system at any time.

Secondary information