The Dutch Police Act provides the police with the legal power to gather information about a person on the internet as long as this does not cause more than ‘a limited violation of privacy’. If the police are gathering more information about a person they need a special legal power laid down in the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure. The dividing line between ‘a limited violation of privacy’ and ‘more than a limited violation of privacy’ is not always clear. The legislator is preparing a new piece of legislation to provide the police with more clarity. This article discusses the suggested law article with respect to the gathering of information from open sources. Furthermore, this article suggests to not only regulate the amount of information the police are gathering but also the kind of tools that the police use (simple search machine versus an advanced web crawler).

This study departs from the notion that current high-tech crime developments bring various new challenges for the rather anthropocentric, instrumental and dualistic theoretical repertoire of criminology. The article reflects on these challenges and proposes the alternative ‘cyborg crime’ perspective. This concept is the result of an explorative research on the theoretical potential of the actor-network theory (ANT) for cybercrime. The study concludes that ANT and the ensuing cyborg crime perspective enables to grasp certain dimensions of cybercrime more profoundly. ANT can move us (criminologists) beyond the classical novelty debate surrounding cybercrime and stimulate theoretical innovation.