Joe Cannataci is Full Professor and 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 also 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 Senior Fellow and Associate Researcher at the CNAM Security-Defense-Intelligence Department in Paris, France as well as the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies at the University of Oxford. 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 anfd 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 has designed and led several EU-supported research projects, both as Principal Investigator and overall scientific co-ordinator, since 1986. Of these more than ten projects were awarded in the SEC (security) research area since 2010 and have included CONSENT, SMART, RESPECT, MAPPING, CARISMAND, SIPP, INGRESS and JP-COOPS. He was decorated by the Republic of France as Officier de l'Ordre de Palmes Academiques (2002). Cannataci received the Louis F. Brandeis Prize for Privacy in the US in 2016 and was the laureate awarded the 2024 Amnesty International Chair by the University of Ghent.

Between April 2022 and June 2023, Professor Cannataci was appointed by the Council of Europe as its lead expert to guide work on the interpretation of the world’s only international treaty regulating privacy and data protection, Convention 108+.  This new responsibility for Cannataci followed that of the UN’s first-ever Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy from which role he stepped down in August 2021 after having served the maximum of two successive three year-terms in the post. During the six years 2015-2021, Prof Cannataci carried out several country visits on behalf of the UN inspecting amongst others the use of personal data and surveillance by the police and intelligence services of several countries including the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Argentina and South Korea. He also presented two reports on COVID and Privacy, one each to the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

Cannataci’s latest books include The Individual and Privacy (Routledge UK March 2015), Privacy, Free Expression & Transparency (UNESCO co-editor 2016-2017) and Handling and Exchanging Electronic Evidence across Europe (co-ed. Springer 2018),  “Essential Codes – International & European Data Protection Law” Gert Vermeulen & Willem Debeuckelaere (eds.) co-edited by: Joe Cannataci, Jean-Philippe Walter, Sophie Kwasny, Giovanni Buttarelli, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, Bruno Gencarelli, Mario Oetheimer  (Larcier, 2018); Changing Communities, Changing Policing, Jeanne-Pia Mifsud Bonnici & Joseph A. Cannataci (eds)., (NWV, Austria, 2018). Legal Challenges of Big Data, Joe Cannataci, Valeria Falce & Oreste Pollicino (eds.)  (Edward Elgar UK 2020). He is also the author of the chapter on Private and family life in the Elgar Encylopedia of Human Rights (September 2022) and co-author (with Aitana Radu) of the chapter A National Security Perspective on Information Leaks, in the Routledge Handbook of Disinformation and National Security (November 2023).