We must move beyond the stage of indignation provoked by the Snowden affair and be realistic in accepting the fact that the digital world of the Internet must not escape state action because it is at the heart of both economic and security issues.

Modern times are characterized by the centrality of the notion of freedom. The earthquake caused by Edward Snowden when he revealed the importance of the control exercised by the American technical intelligence agency, the NSA, over a large part of the world's countries was a major blow to the freedom of expression.s technical intelligence agency, the NSA, over much of the data exchange on the "web", caused widespread outrage, particularly among countries or organisations supposedly close to the United States of America.

Yet what has come to light is only the logical consequence of the freedom offered by the digital revolution through the democratisation of the Internet. Despite an expensive infrastructure, the majority of commonly used services are free. It is therefore natural to ask who pays the bill. The "Snowden affair" has only answered the question that nobody wants to ask. The architecture of the Internet is only viable free of charge if we can observe in exchange for being observed. The American analyst has thus only highlighted one reality: the Internet world is more of a mess than an agora.

It is therefore important to move beyond outrage and to be realistic now and accept that the digital world of the Internet should not be beyond the reach of the state because it is at the heart of both economic and security issues.

It must therefore remain under the vigilance or control of the State for issues of national interest. However, the digital revolution remains a multiplier factor of efficiency and profit that must be used with full knowledge of the facts in order to maintain control. This can only be achieved through the education of all users.

It is natural to be dissatisfied with the fact that we are being watched by our own ally. It is this supposed betrayal that is being questioned, not the fact that the state can and should exercise some control over the world of the Internet, which is at the heart of a conflict between freedom and control. The citizen of the world may indeed feel that his or her freedom has been violated and his or her rights violated. However, they have no right to be outraged. Indeed, the Internet is a space of self-exhibition, even for the most discreet. Connecting to it implicitly means showing oneself through the personal or impersonal data sent, including geolocation data. Who has never sent an e-mail message, shared photos or searched the web? In doing so, we were not ignoring, but hiding the fact that we were disseminating information that was beyond our control. This metadata, sometimes unconsciously shared, is retrieved daily by commercial companies. They offer us free services and sell our data to third party companies that profile our consumer habits in order to sell us suitable products. These are the consequences of an implicit digital contract where connecting to the web to retrieve information implies at the same time giving out personal information.

Beyond this mercantile exploitation of the digital revolution by intrusive commercial companies, the Internet is at the heart of issues that are in the national interest of States. Indeed, the emergence of digital tools, most of which are free, has led criminal or terrorist companies to use them in order to make their communications and financial exchanges anonymous. By drowning their flows in those of hundreds of millions of users, they hope to escape the traditional control of States. That is why it is crucial that the latter have the technical and legislative tools to be able to retrieve the same data involuntarily offered to the web in order to identify and track the illicit, the criminal. They must therefore have the capacity to identify and retrieve telephone numbers, relationships or locations to target these terrorist or criminal entities. This is generally the case for all industrialized countries, not just the United States. That is why we cannot condemn the United States for possessing or using these kinds of tools, with the immoderation that is unique to that country, to better control cyberspace. On the contrary, these same countries are working together to fight more effectively against these scourges that have a global footprint.

If the principle is understood by most citizens, it is the object of the control that may have outraged them. Indeed, it is the fact that their own government may have been targeted, or that their personal data may have been collected, that has sparked this wave of protest. In this dialectic between freedom and control, the restrictions on access to this virtual data are not technical but political. Only legislation can prevent companies from monetizing the information collected on the Internet, but then the question arises as to the financial equilibrium on which the existence of the "web" depends. Only political will can control and direct the research of technical intelligence services, and then the question arises as to why the NSA spied on certain embassies or allied leaders.

It is therefore important not to allow oneself to be caught up in the spiral of unjustified controversy over article 20 of the Military Planning Act (formerly article 13) on the pretext of the NSA's errors in the PRISM case.^[1]. Indeed, the latter enjoys a regime of exception under the Patriot Act, which allows it to disregard individual freedoms. On the contrary, a dispassionate analysis should be carried out in order to assess what is at stake: we need to make the action of state services in their fight against illicit activities more effective and provide a better legislative framework, while protecting citizens from unjustified intrusions into their private lives.

The text adopted by Parliament merely gives our specialised services greater legal capacity while providing them with a stricter framework. It does not call into question the secrecy of correspondence, enshrined in Article L 241-1 of the Internal Security Code. The services will still not be able to access the content of electronic correspondence or data stored in databases without the judge's authorisation. The text only facilitates access to technical connection data, which will be provided on request by operators. By analogy with postal mail, this amounts to reading the address of the sender and the addressee. In this way, the citizen does not have to fear unjustified intrusions into his private life. On the contrary, they have the right to refer matters to the National Commission for the Control of Security Interceptions (CNCIS), an independent administrative authority whose intransigence is known to the security services and whose importance has been stressed by the Constitutional Council. The only people who could legitimately complain would be criminals and terrorists, who would be detected more easily thanks to the facilities provided by the new law and whose correspondence could be read with the prior agreement of the judge.

We must therefore be realistic and not legally limit the capacity of our services to act. The new text responds to their needs by unifying and clarifying the law, creating a single regime where previously there were two devices, the first one being a new law, the second one being a new law, the third one being a new law on the protection of the rights of the child.The second was introduced by the Anti-Terrorism Act 2006 for this area only. By creating a single legal framework, the work of the specialized services is made more efficient and clearer, while facilitating democratic and citizen oversight of their activities. We quoted Juvénal as an epigraph: Who will guard the guards themselves? This question has survived for nearly two millennia because it has always remained relevant. Indeed, this is at the heart of what is at stake in the digital world. It is the issue of the control of state and non-state activities around the use of data deposited on the "web" by citizens. Paradoxically, it is indeed the action of the security services that is the most controlled. It would be naïve to believe that the NSA's action was not authorized at the highest political level and that it escaped all control. The revelations of the "Snowden affair" therefore only make sense if they are justified by the theory of reason of state, in a context of strong economic and diplomatic competition at the global level. They were only made possible by our extreme dependence on American companies in the field of information technology. The latter can be controlled by the American government, for their benefit, while easily escaping ours. What has happened is our responsibility because we have not been able to keep up with the digital revolution. So let us use our outrage to catch up.

France has already begun to reflect on this issue and has designed a France 2020 digital plan to fill the gaps. This plan has identified five challenges including the protection of personal data and privacy, cloud computing, net neutrality and "improving our digital ecosystem to stimulate initiatives and support innovation". So we see that the challenge goes beyond privacy: it is economic. In the context of the crisis that we have been experiencing since the summer of 2008, the digital economy will be one of the main supports that will enable us to return to growth. It already accounted for a quarter of the growth of the French economy in 2010. 700,000 jobs have been created in 15 years. 450,000 more should be created by 2015.^[2]. Moreover, investment in digital technology also increases the competitiveness of all other sectors of the economy, in particular through the use of new services such as cloud computing and the rapid exchange of information. Businesses on the Internet are growing twice as fast as others and exporting twice as much. The digital economy also means new services that are fast becoming indispensable for the daily lives of our fellow citizens. It is therefore a question of French or European companies also being able to compete with Yahoo or Google, thus making it easier to apply the law because in our field of action. The State must have a role to play in supporting the development of companies, currently in difficulty, that were once at the forefront, like Alcatel-Lucent. It must also be realistic and take into account the fact that we are in the midst of an economic war that has never been tougher, especially in times of crisis, and that in this area there are no allies. The virtual world is the new battlefield of the 21st century. The State must therefore educate and prepare our citizens to face this digital revolution and the facilities it offers, which are both an opportunity and a threat that could be exploited by others.

We have probably entered a second era of the Internet in which our naivety is disappearing in the face of the risks that are coming to light. The balances between freedom and control, governments and citizens, service providers and users, transparency and data protection will be difficult to achieve. New rights will emerge, such as the "right to be forgotten", which will have to be guaranteed. New methods of protection and encryption, but also legal ones, as well as new forms of cooperation and diplomacy will have to be found in order to take into account the virtuality of the digital world, where conflict is no less acute. The great challenge of the future will be that of trust. Sociologist Niklas Luhmann said^[3] that trust is a basic fact of life in society and that it reduces the complexity of social life. It is therefore a matter of obtaining this same trust in the digital world in order to reduce suspicion.

^[1] A secret surveillance program designed by the NSA to intercept the communications of foreign Internet users.

^[2] Digital France Report 2010-2020

^[3] Niklas Luhmann, "Trust, a mcomplexity reduction mechanism complexity"Paris, Economica, 2006.

Having spent a first part of his career in the field of electronic warfare and holding a certificate of higher military education, the GRUND Battalion Commander is currently undergoing training for a specialized master's degree at Telecom Paristech.