Joe Cannataci

Joe Cannataci was appointed as the first ever UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy in 2015, following the Snowden revelations about mass surveillance. His UN mandate was renewed in 2018 until August 2021. He is head of the Department of Information Policy & Governance at the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences of the University of Malta. He also co-founded and continues as Co-director (on a part-time basis), of STeP, the Security, Technology & e-Privacy Research Group at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he is Full Professor, holding the Chair of European Information Policy & Technology Law .

A Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and UK Chartered Information technology Professional (CITP), his law background meets his techie side as a Full Professor (adjunct) at the Security Research Institute & School of Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University Australia. His past roles include Vice-Chairman/Chairman of Council of Europe’s (CoE) Commmittee of Experts on Data Protection 1992-1998, Working Parties on: Data Protection and New technologies (1995-2000); Data Protection & Insurance (1994-1998); CoE Rapporteur on Data Protection and Police (1993; 2010; 2012); CoE Expert Consultant on Data Protection and Cybercrime (2012-2014); UNESCO Expert Consultant on Privacy & Transparency on the Internet (2015); Scientific Co-ordinator of multiple EU FP7 & H2020 research projects focussing on privacy.

He was decorated by the Republic of France as Officier de l’Ordre de Palmes Academiques (2002). His latest books include The Individual and Privacy (Routledge March 2015), Privacy, Free Expression & Transparency (UNESCO co-editor 2016-2017) and Handling and Exchanging Electronic Evidence across Europe (co-ed. Springer 2018).