★From genetic imprints to the eruption of "new technologies" how scientific revolution is at work at crime scenes
★Public interest in the subject
★By high-profile media personalities
★On the omnipresence of technology in our lives.
★On the ethical problems associated with widespread surveillance.

The IRCGN, the Gendarmerie Nationale's technical and scientific police laboratory, was founded in 1887 and is now recognised as one of the most efficient in the world. It has revolutionised the way investigators analyse crime scenes and has solved countless mysteries.
But beyond the fascination by the general public, fostered by cinema and television series, questions are arising, describing a worrying future world: control of citizens' freedoms, widespread surveillance and registration of the population... Is it possible a totalitarian drift is being fed by behavioural psychology leading to the conditioning of the population, in the name of the promise of a less dangerous world? A world where every individual would be traced, tracked and identified?

This book draws a line between these tragic fantasies and the reality of new forensic tools currently being studied in research and development laboratories. Its aim is to provide answers to all the questions in this area troubling our societies , as well as objective information on the current state of research and the real issues at stake: guiding an investigation in the right direction and building the criminal evidence(s) that will lead to the perpetrator's conviction by the courts.

Jacques Pradel is a fierce and widely recognised observer of the legal world. A radio and television personality, he hosted L'heure du crime on RTL for a decade, and is the voice of "Chroniques criminelles", broadcast on TFX and available as a podcast. In 2022, he published "Mes archives criminelles" at Le Rocher, which was published in paperback the same month by Litos.

François Daoust, former director of the IRCGN, creator of the National
Gendarmerie's Judicial Division and a specialist in criminal investigation, has been director of the Research Centre at the National Gendarmerie Officers' Training School since 2020. He is also a professor of forensic science at several universities (Cergy Pontoise, CNAM, etc.). He is the author of "Sur les traces de la police technique et scientifique: L'organisation de la police technique et scientifique en France" (PUF, 2020).