Joe Cannataci founded and co-ordinates the LexConverge network which specialises in Security Research, Technology Law and Information Policy and which is a network which has been built gradually over the past 30 years since 1986. Apart from the Department of Information Policy and Governance (UoM-IPG) which has grown out of the Law & IT Research Unit that Joe established at the University of Malta in 1988, in the Netherlands he has co-founded the inter-disciplinary STeP-RUG — Security, Technology & e-Privacy Research Group. Together with STeP Co-Director, Prof Jeanne Mifsud Bonnici, Joe has designed, successfully bid for and co-ordinates the following research projects where computer science, law, sociology, social psychology, political science and the security sciences are just some of the many disciplines contributing to the investigation.
CONSENT — Privacy and consent in user-generated content and social networking.
SMART — smart surveillance, with a brief from the European Commission to produce a pan-European draft law as required under CFD/977/JHA/2008 and the draft directive of 25.01.2012 regulating automated collection of personal data for law enforcement purposes.
RESPECT — surveillance — with a brief to produce operational and design guidelines for law enforcement agencies using personal data arising out of surveillance, including Work Packages on surveillance in cyberspace, CTF – Counter-terrorism Finance, RFID.
MAPPING — internet governance, privacy and intellectual property. More details, blogs etc. at http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/111214_en.html.
Also involved in the design of and are participating as (Legal/Ethical/Social Impact) Work Package co-ordinators in:
INGRESS — Innovative Technology for Fingerprint Live Scanners.
SiiP — voice-recognition — commenced May 2014.
e-crime — electronic crime — commenced April 2014.
EVIDENCE — European Informatics Data Exchange Framework for Courts and Evidence. The project investigates such matters as:
- the value assigned to electronic evidence all over EU Member states
- common criteria for reliability of electronic evidence independently from the country or LEA by which is gathered
- reliability, validity and integrity of the electronic proof
- compliance with data protection law provisions
The output from EVIDENCE is expected to include developing a road map–guidelines, recommendations, technical standards, research agenda–for realising the missing Common European Framework for the systematic, aligned and uniform application of new technologies in the collection, use and exchange of evidence.
And again, more recently as co-ordinators of the following Horizon 2020 projects:
CARISMAND — commenced October 2015 — Culture And RISkmanagement in Man-Made And Natural Disasters.
CITYCoP — commenced June 2015 — Citizen Interaction Technologies Yield Community Policing.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy — A Special Rapporteur is an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. In July 2015, the Human Rights Council appointed Prof. Joseph Cannataci of Malta as the first-ever Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy. The appointment is for three years.
Some fairly recent ICT-policy and privacy related project events:
A. Model Law on smart surveillance
The SMART On-line Privacy conference in March 2014 included the first stage of a stakeholder debate on the model law on smart surveillance being developed by the SMART project. It is expected that the current and successive drafts will continue to be discussed by stakeholders in various rounds of consultation before being incorporated into a Policy Brief to be presented to both the European Commission and the European Parliament some time in 2016-2017.
B. Privacy-friendly, data-protection compliant tool-kit including model law on surveillance
The latest Policy Workshop in the RESPECT project held in Barcelona on 17-18 Sep 2014 on the theme of “Technology and Crime: Privacy and Policy in the era of Big Data” was followed by a final conference in April (20-22) 2015. The latter also included the next stage of a stakeholder debate on the model law on surveillance being developed by the RESPECT project also as part of follow-up to the SMART project. It is expected that the current and successive drafts will continue to be discussed by stakeholders in various rounds of consultation before being incorporated into a Policy Brief to be presented to both the European Commission and the European Parliament some time in 2016-7.
C. DEMOSEC
The recent joint event in the RESPECT project inter alia discussing a first draft of a policy brief on some of the findings and recommendations arising from the RESPECT and allied SURVEILLE and IRISS projects was held in Brussels on 29-30 October 2014.
DEMOSEC Cluster
DEMOSEC is the acronym for the platform DEMOcracy and SECurity. The three research projects–IRISS, RESPECT and SURVEILLE–funded under the European Commissions’ 7th Framework programme addressing the complex interplay between security, democracy, privacy, law and technology are cooperating on this platform.