Cannataci re-appointed UN Rapporteur on Privacy

Professor Joe Cannataci, Head of the Department of Information Policy & Governance and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences at the University of Malta, has been re-appointed Special Rapporteur on Privacy by the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Cannataci was originally appointed in 2015 for a period of three years as the UN’s first-ever Special Rapporteur for Privacy and to date he is the only Maltese to have been appointed to the prestigious post of Special Rapporteur in the field of Human Rights.

His mandate has been renewed until August 2021 when he will have completed the maximum permissible two successive terms in office.

For the past three years, Prof. Cannataci has led new global initiatives on improving the level of privacy on-line and elsewhere in an increasingly digital world. These have also included official visits to countries heavily involved in electronic surveillance, such as the United States of America and France, as well as very public disputes with governments such as that of Japan, when it was in the process of introducing controversial laws threatening privacy.

Prof. Cannataci has a long and distinguished career in privacy-related issues. Between 1992 and 1998 he was first vice-chairman and then chairman of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Data Protection. He has held, or currently holds, research grants from the British Academy, the Council of Europe, COST, UNESCO and the European Commission. In 2016 he was awarded the Brandeis Prize for Privacy in the US.

He has written books and articles on data protection law, liability for expert systems, legal aspects of medical informatics, copyright in computer software and has co-authored various papers and textbook chapters on self-regulation and the Internet, the EU Constitution and data protection, on-line dispute resolution, data retention and police data.

Professor Joe Cannataci