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Que deviennent les libertés publiques lorsque l'Etat, par ses hommes politiques et ses services de renseignement, évoque un scénario catastrophe à venir, et, au nom de la sécurité collective, argue d'une situation d'exception justifiant la surveillance et la coercition en invoquant la nécessité de l'antiterrorisme ? Est-ce que ces mesures antiterroristes sont proportionnelles au danger ? Sont-elles raisonnables ? Et qui doit trancher

How are we to understand "war" in the contemporary world? Indeed the word is frequently used to describe the political violence that occurs in liberal regimes? What happens to civil liberties when the state, through its politicians and its intelligence services, invokes the argument of the "worst-case scenario", when in the name of collective security it invokes a situation of exception in order to legitimise surveillance and coercion in the name of antiterrorism? Are these antiterrorist measures proportional to the danger? Are they reasonable? Who is to decide?
This issue tries to develop on the relations between, on the one hand, the antiterrorist measures and the martial discourses that accompany them in a context in which classical "wars" have disappeared from the continent and, on the other hand, the European societies. It raises the question of the mimetic behaviour of violent clandestine groups and coercive state-agencies and analyses what is at stake in the surveillance of populations, especially of foreigners. It presents the conclusions of the researchers of the ELISE programme on the question of the future of liberty in a context of new forms of coercion, legitimised by the argument of security and of protection of populations in a world said to be in a "permanent state of war".