Abstract

Recent antiterrorism legislation allows for the preventive breaking up of any social gathering whilst guaranteeing a tight surveillance of private life. It is less about punishing specific acts than ensuring a generalised control. It is in this context that we can best understand the laws put in place to control the Net. Recent measures aimed at terrorism and the measures guaranteeing surveillance of the Net have an immediate international impact. They are aimed at a virtual criminality. Action is no longer reactive but proactive. These measures inscribe themselves in a mutation of criminal law dedicated to the primacy of procedure over the law and give all power to the police. The task of the police becomes directly, and no longer in a mediated fashion, one of maintaining order, and the latter is essentially social control