The Speaker of the House of Representatives Anġlu Farrugia, today opened the Third International Intelligence Oversight Forum (IIOF) which is being convened in the plenary chamber of the Parliament of Malta between 29-30 November 2019.

The event is an initiative of the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Privacy, Prof. Joseph Cannataci, and is being attended by over 55 participants hailing from a number of countries across different continents, all being Members of national intelligence oversight bodies and intelligence agencies in their respective counties of origin. It is co-organised by the Department of Information Policy & Governance of the University of Malta and STeP, the Security, Technology & e-Privacy Research Group of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

The first edition of the IIOF was held in Bucharest, Romania in 2016 with the help of the Romanian Standing Committee of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies for Parliamentary Oversight, while the second edition was organised in Brussels, Belgium in 2017, hosted by the Belgian Speaker, together with the Belgian Data Protection Authority and the Belgian Oversight Committee of the Parliament.

The theme of this year’s forum is "Latest Challenges to Intelligence Oversight in a Democracy" where participants shall be addressing a number of relevant and topical issues such as “Training of Oversight Bodies from Inspection to Judicial Review: the UK experience”; “Cooperation in intelligence”; “New Oversight Mechanisms: the Canadian Experience”; “Data protection & data retention in a police and national security context”; “Does size matter in intelligence oversight?”; and “Developments in 2017-2018 on oversight and exchange mechanism in the world”.