Federal Act
on the Intelligence Service
(Intelligence Service Act, IntelSA)

This Act reg­u­lates:

a.

the activ­it­ies of the Fed­er­al In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice (FIS);

b.

co­oper­a­tion between the FIS and oth­er fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies, the can­tons, for­eign coun­tries and private in­di­vidu­als;

c.

polit­ic­al gov­ernance of the FIS and the con­trol and su­per­vi­sion of in­tel­li­gence activ­it­ies.

This Act serves to pro­tect im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests; its aim is

a.

to con­trib­ute to­wards safe­guard­ing Switzer­land’s demo­crat­ic and con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ciples and pro­tect­ing the freedoms of its pop­u­la­tion;

b.

to in­crease the se­cur­ity of the Swiss pop­u­la­tion and of Swiss cit­izens abroad;

c.

to sup­port Switzer­land’s ca­pa­city to act;

d.

to con­trib­ute to­wards safe­guard­ing in­ter­na­tion­al se­cur­ity in­terests.

In the event of a ser­i­ous and im­me­di­ate threat, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­ploy the FIS not only to pro­tect the na­tion­al in­terests men­tioned in Art­icle 2 but also:

a.

to pro­tect ba­sic con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der in Switzer­land;

b.

to sup­port Swiss for­eign policy;

c.

to pro­tect Switzer­land as a loc­a­tion for em­ploy­ment, busi­ness and fin­ance.

This Act ap­plies to the fol­low­ing au­thor­it­ies and per­sons:

a.

fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies that are giv­en the task of car­ry­ing out in­tel­li­gence activ­it­ies;

b.

fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and pub­lic and private or­gan­isa­tions, per­sons and en­tit­ies that hold in­form­a­tion rel­ev­ant to in­tel­li­gence mat­ters;

c.

private in­di­vidu­als who are re­quired to pass on in­form­a­tion rel­ev­ant to in­tel­li­gence mat­ters in terms of this Act.

¹ In or­der to carry out its tasks, the FIS shall gath­er in­form­a­tion from sources that are pub­licly and non-pub­licly ac­cess­ible.

² For this pur­pose it shall use in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures which do and do not re­quire au­thor­isa­tion.

³ In each case, it shall choose the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure that:

a.

is most suit­able and ne­ces­sary for achiev­ing a spe­cif­ic in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing ob­ject­ive; and

b.

causes the least in­ter­fer­ence with the fun­da­ment­al rights of the per­sons con­cerned.

⁴ It may gath­er per­son­al data without this com­ing to the at­ten­tion of the per­sons con­cerned.

⁵ It may not gath­er or pro­cess any in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to polit­ic­al activ­it­ies or the ex­er­cise of free­dom of speech, as­sembly or as­so­ci­ation in Switzer­land.

⁶ It may by way of ex­cep­tion gath­er in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 5 about an or­gan­isa­tion or per­son and re­cord that in­form­a­tion in re­la­tion to a per­son if there are spe­cif­ic in­dic­a­tions that the per­son is ex­er­cising their rights in or­der to pre­pare for or carry out ter­ror­ist, es­pi­on­age or vi­ol­ent-ex­trem­ist activ­it­ies.

⁷ It shall de­lete data re­cor­ded in re­la­tion to a per­son once par­ti­cip­a­tion in the activ­it­ies men­tioned para­graph 6 can be ex­cluded, but one year at the latest after the in­form­a­tion has been re­cor­ded if no such activ­it­ies have been proven up to that time.

⁸ It may also gath­er and pro­cess in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 5 about or­gan­isa­tions and groups on the watch list in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 72 or their mem­bers if the threats posed by these or­gan­isa­tions and groups can be as­sessed thereby.

¹ The FIS shall gath­er and pro­cess in­form­a­tion for the fol­low­ing pur­poses:

a.

the early re­cog­ni­tion and pre­ven­tion of threats to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity from:

1.

ter­ror­ism,

2.

es­pi­on­age,

3.

the pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuc­le­ar, bio­lo­gic­al or chem­ic­al weapons, in­clud­ing their de­liv­ery sys­tems, and all ci­vil­ian and mil­it­ary goods and tech­no­lo­gies re­quired to man­u­fac­ture such weapons (ABC pro­lif­er­a­tion) or the il­leg­al trade in ra­dio­act­ive sub­stances, war ma­ter­i­al and oth­er arma­ments,

4.⁴

at­tacks on sup­ply sys­tems for en­ergy and drink­ing wa­ter, in­form­a­tion, com­mu­nic­a­tion and trans­port in­fra­struc­tures and oth­er pro­cesses, sys­tems and fa­cil­it­ies that are es­sen­tial for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the eco­nomy and well-be­ing of the pop­u­la­tion (crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures),

5.

vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism;

b.

to identi­fy, ob­serve and as­sess events out­side Switzer­land that are of se­cur­ity-policy sig­ni­fic­ance;

c.

to safe­guard Switzer­land’s ca­pa­city to act;

d.

to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 where the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has is­sued a spe­cif­ic man­date to do so.

² The FIS shall as­sess the threat situ­ation and in­form the fed­er­al agen­cies and can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies con­cerned reg­u­larly about any threats and about the meas­ures taken and planned in terms of this Act. If re­quired, it shall alert the state agen­cies re­spons­ible.

³ It shall, while pro­tect­ing its sources, in­form oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al agen­cies about events and in­tel­li­gence that are rel­ev­ant to the stat­utory tasks of these agen­cies in safe­guard­ing in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

⁴ It shall cul­tiv­ate in­tel­li­gence re­la­tions between Switzer­land and for­eign agen­cies.

⁵ It is re­spons­ible for provid­ing the in­tel­li­gence early warn­ing in or­der to pro­tect crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures.

⁶ It runs pro­grammes to provide in­form­a­tion on and raise aware­ness of threats to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

⁷ It pro­tects its em­ploy­ees, its fa­cil­it­ies, its sources and the data that it pro­cesses.

¹ The FIS shall take meas­ures to guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion, safety and se­cur­ity of its em­ploy­ees, fa­cil­it­ies and the data that it pro­cesses. To this end it may:

a.

carry out on its premises bag and per­son­al checks on:

1.

FIS em­ploy­ees,

2.

per­sons work­ing tem­por­ar­ily for the FIS,

3.

em­ploy­ees of com­pan­ies that provide the FIS with ser­vices on its premises;

b.

carry out checks of rooms and spaces in FIS fa­cil­it­ies to veri­fy wheth­er the reg­u­la­tions on pro­tect­ing clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion are be­ing com­plied with;

c.

mon­it­or archive rooms, strong rooms and stor­e­rooms and the ac­cess zones to the FIS premises us­ing video trans­mis­sion and re­cord­ing devices;

d.

op­er­ate tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions jam­mers in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 34 para­graph 1^ter of the Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Act of 30 April 1997⁵ on premises that it uses.

² The FIS shall op­er­ate a se­cure com­puter net­work for its in­form­a­tion sys­tems that must in par­tic­u­lar be pro­tec­ted against ac­cess by un­au­thor­ised per­sons.

¹ FIS em­ploy­ees may be is­sued with weapons for op­er­a­tions in Switzer­land if they are ex­posed to spe­cial dangers in the course of their ser­vice du­ties.

² Armed em­ploy­ees may only use their weapons for self-de­fence or in emer­gen­cies and only in a man­ner ap­pro­pri­ate to the cir­cum­stances.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the cat­egor­ies of em­ploy­ee that may carry weapons and the train­ing that they re­quire.

¹ Each can­ton shall des­ig­nate an au­thor­ity to work with the FIS in im­ple­ment­ing this Act (the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­ity). It shall en­sure that this au­thor­ity is able to carry out FIS as­sign­ments im­me­di­ately.

² The FIS shall is­sue as­sign­ments to the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies in writ­ing; in cases of ur­gency it may is­sue as­sign­ments verbally and con­firm them ret­ro­spect­ively in writ­ing.

¹ The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of De­fence, Civil Pro­tec­tion and Sport (DDPS) shall in­form the inter-can­ton­al con­fer­ences of gov­ern­ments reg­u­larly and in the event of in­cid­ents about its as­sess­ment of the threat situ­ation.

² The FIS shall in­form the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies about events that af­fect the tasks that they carry out.

¹ The FIS shall no­ti­fy the re­spons­ible agen­cies in the Armed Forces In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice and the Mil­it­ary Se­cur­ity Ser­vice about events that af­fect the tasks that they carry out.

² It may work with the re­spons­ible agen­cies of the Armed Forces in re­la­tion to in­ter­na­tion­al mil­it­ary con­tacts, re­quest them for in­form­a­tion and is­sue them with as­sign­ments re­lated to in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.

the co­oper­a­tion and ex­change of in­form­a­tion between the FIS and the re­spons­ible agen­cies of the Armed Forces In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice;

b.

the di­vi­sion of tasks between the FIS and the Mil­it­ary Se­cur­ity Ser­vice dur­ing peace sup­port or civil sup­port op­er­a­tions or act­ive ser­vice.

¹ The FIS may work with for­eign in­tel­li­gence ser­vices and se­cur­ity ser­vices in terms of Art­icle 70 para­graph 1 let­ter f in or­der to im­ple­ment this Act, in that it:

a.

re­ceives or passes on use­ful in­form­a­tion;

b.

holds joint tech­nic­al dis­cus­sions and con­fer­ences;

c.

car­ries out joint activ­it­ies to gath­er and eval­u­ate in­form­a­tion and to as­sess the threat situ­ation;

d.

pro­cures and passes on in­form­a­tion to the re­quest­ing state in or­der to as­sess wheth­er a per­son may work on clas­si­fied for­eign pro­jects re­lated to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity or have ac­cess to clas­si­fied for­eign in­form­a­tion, ma­ter­i­als or fa­cil­it­ies;

e.

par­ti­cip­ates in terms of Art­icle 70 para­graph 3 in in­ter­na­tion­al auto­mated in­form­a­tion sys­tems.

² It may in con­sulta­tion with the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of For­eign Af­fairs (FD­FA) post em­ploy­ees to Swiss rep­res­ent­a­tions abroad in or­der to pro­mote in­ter­na­tion­al con­tacts. These em­ploy­ees shall work dir­ectly with the re­spons­ible au­thor­it­ies of the host state and third coun­tries in or­der to im­ple­ment this Act.

³ The FIS is re­spons­ible for co­oper­a­tion with for­eign in­tel­li­gence ser­vices in or­der to carry out in­tel­li­gence tasks in terms of this Act.

⁴ The can­tons may work with the com­pet­ent for­eign po­lice au­thor­it­ies in or­der to deal with se­cur­ity is­sues in the bor­der zone.

Pub­lic sources of in­form­a­tion are in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

pub­licly ac­cess­ible me­dia;

b.

pub­licly ac­cess­ible re­gisters of fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies;

c.⁶

per­son­al data made pub­licly ac­cess­ible by private in­di­vidu­als;

d.

state­ments made in pub­lic.

¹ The FIS may ob­serve and make sound and im­age re­cord­ings of events and fa­cil­it­ies in pub­lic and gen­er­ally ac­cess­ible loc­a­tions. It may use air­craft and satel­lites for this pur­pose.

² The ob­ser­va­tion and sound and im­age re­cord­ing of events and fa­cil­it­ies that fall with­in the private do­main are not per­mit­ted. Sound and im­age re­cord­ings that fall with­in the pro­tec­ted private do­main but which can­not be pre­ven­ted for tech­nic­al reas­ons must be des­troyed im­me­di­ately.

¹ Hu­man sources are per­sons who:

a.

provide the FIS with in­form­a­tion or in­tel­li­gence;

b.

provide the FIS with ser­vices that as­sist in the ful­fil­ment of tasks in terms of this Act;

c.

sup­port the FIS in pro­cur­ing in­form­a­tion.

² The FIS may pay hu­man sources ap­pro­pri­ately for their activ­it­ies. Where this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to pro­tect the sources or to gath­er fur­ther in­form­a­tion, the pay­ment shall not be re­garded as tax­able in­come or as in­come in terms of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1946⁷on Old-Age and Sur­viv­ors' In­sur­ance.

³ The FIS shall take the meas­ures re­quired to pro­tect the life and limb of hu­man sources. Such meas­ures may also be taken in re­spect of per­sons closely as­so­ci­ated with hu­man sources.

⁴ The Head of the DDPS may in spe­cif­ic cases au­thor­ise the FIS to provide hu­man sources with a cov­er story or an ali­as iden­tity on con­clu­sion of their co­oper­a­tion, if this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to pro­tect the life and limb of the per­sons con­cerned.

⁵ The meas­ures men­tioned in para­graphs 3 and 4 are lim­ited to the peri­od of ac­tu­al danger. By way of ex­cep­tion, a time lim­it may be dis­pensed with or a tem­por­ary meas­ure may be changed in­to a per­man­ent meas­ure if the risks to the per­sons con­cerned are par­tic­u­larly ser­i­ous and it must be ex­pec­ted that they will con­tin­ue to ap­ply.

¹ The FIS may ar­range for alerts to be is­sued in the com­pu­ter­ised po­lice search sys­tem in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 15 para­graph 1 of the Fed­er­al Act of 13 June 2008⁸ on the Fed­er­al Po­lice In­form­a­tion Sys­tems (FPISA) and in the na­tion­al part of the Schen­gen In­form­a­tion Sys­tem in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 16 para­graph 2 FPISA in re­spect of per­sons and vehicles.

² An alert in re­spect of a per­son or a vehicle is only per­mit­ted if there is reas­on to be­lieve that:

a.

the per­son con­cerned poses a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a;

b.

the vehicle is be­ing used by a per­son defined in let­ter a;

c.

the vehicle will be used for a dif­fer­ent spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a;

d.

the where­abouts of a per­son or a vehicle must be es­tab­lished in or­der to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3.

³ The alert may not be is­sued in or­der to mon­it­or the vehicle of a third party that be­longs to any of the pro­fes­sions men­tioned in Art­icles 171–173 of the Crim­in­al Pro­ced­ure Code (Crim­PC)⁹.

¹ The Dir­ect­or of the FIS may au­thor­ise FIS em­ploy­ees to be provided with a cov­er story so that they are not re­cog­nised as be­long­ing to the FIS.

² In con­sulta­tion with or at the re­quest of a can­ton, the Dir­ect­or may also au­thor­ise mem­bers of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies to be provided with a cov­er story by the FIS.

³ In or­der to es­tab­lish and main­tain a cov­er story, the FIS may pro­duce or al­ter of­fi­cial doc­u­ments. The re­spons­ible fed­er­al, can­ton­al and com­mun­al au­thor­it­ies are re­quired to co­oper­ate with the FIS.

⁴ The Dir­ect­or of the FIS shall sub­mit a re­port each year to the Head of the DDPS on the use of cov­er stor­ies.

⁵ Con­ceal­ing one’s as­so­ci­ation with the FIS or a can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­ity without us­ing of­fi­cial doc­u­ments pro­duced or altered for this pur­pose does not re­quire any spe­cial au­thor­isa­tion.

¹ The Head of the DDPS may au­thor­ise the fol­low­ing per­sons to be provided with an ali­as iden­tity, i.e. be giv­en an iden­tity oth­er than their true iden­tity in or­der to en­sure their safety or fa­cil­it­ate in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing:

a.

FIS em­ploy­ees;

b.

in con­sulta­tion with or at the re­quest of the can­ton, em­ploy­ees of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies act­ing in terms of a fed­er­al man­date;

c.

hu­man sources in the course of a spe­cif­ic op­er­a­tion.

² The ali­as iden­tity may be used for as long as re­quired to en­sure the safety of the per­son con­cerned or fa­cil­it­ate in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing. Use is sub­ject to the fol­low­ing time lim­its:

a.

for em­ploy­ees of the FIS or of can­ton­al se­cur­ity agen­cies: a max­im­um of five years; if re­quired, this peri­od may be ex­ten­ded for a max­im­um of three fur­ther years in any giv­en case;

b.

for hu­man sources: a max­im­um of twelve months; if re­quired, this peri­od may be ex­ten­ded for a max­im­um of twelve fur­ther months in any giv­en case.

³ The use of an ali­as iden­tity to gath­er in­form­a­tion is only per­mit­ted for a pur­pose set out in Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 and where:

a.

at­tempts to gath­er in­form­a­tion without us­ing an ali­as iden­tity have been un­suc­cess­ful, would have no pro­spect of suc­cess without the use of an ali­as iden­tity or would be dis­pro­por­tion­ately more dif­fi­cult; or

b.

there is a threat to a sig­ni­fic­ant leg­al in­terest such as the life and limb or phys­ic­al in­teg­rity of the per­son re­quired to gath­er the in­form­a­tion or of a per­son closely as­so­ci­ated with that per­son.

⁴ In or­der to de­vel­op and main­tain a cov­er story, the FIS may pro­duce or al­ter iden­tity doc­u­ments, of­fi­cial doc­u­ments and oth­er doc­u­ments as well as per­son­al de­tails. The re­spons­ible fed­er­al, can­ton­al and com­mun­al au­thor­it­ies are re­quired to co­oper­ate with the FIS.

⁵ The FIS shall take the re­quired meas­ures to pro­tect the per­son’s true iden­tity from be­ing re­vealed.

¹ Fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and or­gan­isa­tions that the Con­fed­er­a­tion or the can­tons have man­dated to ful­fil pub­lic tasks are ob­liged in spe­cif­ic cases and on jus­ti­fied re­quest to provide the FIS with the in­form­a­tion re­quired to identi­fy or re­pel a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity or to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3.

² A spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity is es­tab­lished if a sig­ni­fic­ant leg­al in­terest such as the life and limb or the liberty of per­sons or the ex­ist­ence and func­tion­ing of the state is af­fected and the threat comes from:

a.

ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies in the sense of at­tempts to in­flu­ence or change the frame­work of the state that are real­ised or en­cour­aged by com­mit­ting or threat­en­ing to com­mit ser­i­ous of­fences or by spread­ing fear and alarm;

b.

es­pi­on­age in terms of Art­icles 272–274 and 301 of the Crim­in­al Code (SCC)¹⁰ and Art­icles 86 and 93 of the Mil­it­ary Crim­in­al Code of 13 June 1927¹¹;

c.

ABC pro­lif­er­a­tion or the il­leg­al trade in ra­dio­act­ive sub­stances, war ma­ter­i­al and oth­er arma­ments;

d.

an at­tack on crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­ture; or

e.

vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ist activ­it­ies in the sense of ef­forts by or­gan­isa­tions that re­ject demo­crat­ic and con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues and which com­mit, in­cite or en­dorse acts of vi­ol­ence in or­der to achieve their ob­ject­ives.

³ The au­thor­it­ies and or­gan­isa­tions men­tioned in para­graph 1 are re­quired to pre­serve secrecy in re­la­tion to third parties with re­gard to the re­quest and any in­form­a­tion provided. They are per­mit­ted to in­form their su­per­i­ors and su­per­vis­ory bod­ies.

⁴ They may file a re­port without hav­ing to be re­ques­ted to do so if they identi­fy a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity in terms of para­graph 2.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify in an or­din­ance the or­gan­isa­tions that are re­quired to provide in­form­a­tion; these in­clude in par­tic­u­lar pub­lic and private or­gan­isa­tions that do not form part of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion but which is­sue le­gis­la­tion or first-in­stance rul­ings as defined in Art­icle 5 of the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968¹²or which ful­fil ex­ec­ut­ive tasks that have been del­eg­ated to them by the Con­fed­er­a­tion; the can­tons are not re­garded as such or­gan­isa­tions.

¹ The fol­low­ing au­thor­it­ies are ob­liged to provide the FIS with in­form­a­tion in or­der to carry out its tasks:

a.

courts, pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­it­ies and au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for ex­ecut­ing crim­in­al sen­tences and meas­ures;

b.

the bor­der guard and cus­toms au­thor­it­ies;

c.

au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for mil­it­ary se­cur­ity, the au­thor­it­ies of the Armed Forces In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice and the au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for the mil­it­ary ser­vice re­gis­tra­tion sys­tem;

d.

fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for mat­ters re­lat­ing to the entry and res­id­ence of for­eign na­tion­als and for asylum mat­ters;

e.

au­thor­it­ies that are in­volved in se­cur­ity poli­cing tasks;

f.

res­id­ents’ re­gister of­fices;

g.

au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for dip­lo­mat­ic and con­su­lar mat­ters;

h.

au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for au­thor­ising deal­ings with cer­tain goods;

i.

au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for the op­er­a­tion of com­puter sys­tems;

j.

au­thor­it­ies that are re­spons­ible for the su­per­vi­sion of the fin­an­cial mar­kets and for ac­cept­ing re­ports of sus­pi­cions of money laun­der­ing in cases of fin­an­cing ter­ror­ism and ABC pro­lif­er­a­tion activ­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with the Anti-Money Laun­der­ing Act of 10 Oc­to­ber 1997¹³.

² The au­thor­it­ies lis­ted in para­graph 1 are re­quired to pre­serve secrecy in re­la­tion to third parties with re­gard to the re­quest and any in­form­a­tion provided. They are per­mit­ted to in­form their su­per­i­ors and su­per­vi­sion bod­ies.

³ The au­thor­it­ies lis­ted in para­graph 1 shall file a re­port without hav­ing to be re­ques­ted to do so if they identi­fy a spe­cif­ic and ser­i­ous threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.¹⁴

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify in an un­pub­lished list which activ­it­ies and in­tel­li­gence must be re­por­ted to the FIS without a re­quest be­ing re­quired. It shall spe­cify the ex­tent of the ob­lig­a­tion to re­port and the pro­ced­ure for provid­ing in­form­a­tion.

In the case of in­form­a­tion in terms of Art­icle 19 or 20, the stat­utory pro­tec­tion for pro­fes­sion­al con­fid­en­ti­al­ity con­tin­ues to ap­ply.

¹ In the event of any dif­fer­ences of opin­ion between the FIS and an­oth­er unit of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion with re­gard to an ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 or 20, the rel­ev­ant joint su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall make the fi­nal de­cision.

² In the case of dif­fer­ences of opin­ion between the FIS and an or­gan­isa­tion, of­ficer or au­thor­ity that does not form part of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion with re­gard to an ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 or 20, the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court shall de­cide in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 36a of the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court Act of 17 June 2005¹⁵.

¹ The FIS may ac­cept re­ports from any per­son.

² It may ob­tain by writ­ten or verbal re­quest spe­cif­ic in­form­a­tion that it re­quires in or­der to carry out its tasks. It may in­vite per­sons in writ­ing to be ques­tioned.

³ It shall no­ti­fy the per­son re­ques­ted for in­form­a­tion that they are provid­ing in­form­a­tion vol­un­tar­ily; the fore­go­ing does not ap­ply to in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing while us­ing a cov­er story.

¹ In or­der to carry out its tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a, the FIS may have a per­son stopped in or­der to es­tab­lish their iden­tity and to ques­tion them briefly in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 23.

² The per­son shall be stopped by can­ton­al po­lice of­ficers.

³ The FIS may re­quire the per­son stopped to provide their per­son­al de­tails and pro­duce iden­tity doc­u­ments.

¹ In­so­far as it is ne­ces­sary to identi­fy, pre­vent or re­pel a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 para­graph 2, the FIS may re­quest the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion and re­cords in spe­cif­ic cases:

a.

from a nat­ur­al per­son or leg­al en­tity that car­ries out trans­port op­er­a­tions for com­mer­cial gain or provides or ar­ranges means of trans­port: in­form­a­tion about a ser­vice that it has provided;

b.

from private op­er­at­ors of se­cur­ity in­fra­struc­tures, in par­tic­u­lar im­age trans­mis­sion and im­age re­cord­ing devices: the han­dover of re­cord­ings, in­clud­ing re­cord­ings of events in pub­lic loc­a­tions.

² The FIS may also ob­tain in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 15 of the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 2016¹⁶ on the Sur­veil­lance of Postal and Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Traffic (SPTA).¹⁷

¹ The fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quire au­thor­isa­tion:

a.¹⁸

sur­veil­lance of post and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and re­quests for mar­gin­al data re­lat­ing to post and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in ac­cord­ance with the SPTA¹⁹;

a^bis.²⁰

the use of spe­cial tech­nic­al devices to mon­it­or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, to re­cord trans­mis­sions or to identi­fy a per­son or ob­ject or to as­cer­tain their loc­a­tion if mon­it­or­ing in ac­cord­ance with let­ter a has been un­suc­cess­ful, would be without pro­spect of suc­cess or would be un­reas­on­ably dif­fi­cult and the li­cences un­der tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions law for the spe­cial tech­nic­al devices have been ob­tained;

b.

the use of loc­al­isa­tion devices to es­tab­lish the loc­a­tion and the move­ments of per­sons or ob­jects;

c.

the use of mon­it­or­ing devices in or­der to listen to and re­cord words spoken in non-pub­lic places or to ob­serve and re­cord events at non-pub­lic or not gen­er­ally ac­cess­ible loc­a­tions;

d.

the in­tru­sion in­to com­puter sys­tems and com­puter net­works in or­der to:

1.

gath­er in­form­a­tion avail­able there or trans­mit­ted from there,

2.

dis­rupt, pre­vent or slow down ac­cess to in­form­a­tion where the com­puter sys­tems and com­puter net­works are be­ing used for at­tacks on crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures;

e.

the search of premises, vehicles or stor­age fa­cil­it­ies in or­der to pro­cure ob­jects or in­form­a­tion there or in­form­a­tion trans­mit­ted from there.

² The meas­ures shall be car­ried out cov­ertly; the per­son con­cerned is not made aware there­of.

¹ The FIS may or­der an in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion if:

a.

there is a spe­cif­ic threat in terms of Art­icle 19 para­graph 2 let­ters a–d or the meas­ure is re­quired to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3;

b.

the ser­i­ous­ness of the threat jus­ti­fies the meas­ure; and

c.

in­tel­li­gence in­vest­ig­a­tions so far have been un­suc­cess­ful or would oth­er­wise be without pro­spect of suc­cess or un­reas­on­ably dif­fi­cult.

² The FIS shall ob­tain the au­thor­isa­tion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and clear­ance from the Head of the DDPS be­fore car­ry­ing out the meas­ure.

³ If oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al agen­cies are re­quired to par­ti­cip­ate in car­ry­ing out the meas­ure, the FIS shall is­sue them with a writ­ten or­der as soon as the au­thor­isa­tion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and clear­ance from the Head of the DDPS is gran­ted. The in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure must be kept secret.

¹ The FIS may also or­der an in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion in re­la­tion to a third party if there is reas­on to be­lieve that the per­son from whom it is in­ten­ded to gath­er the in­form­a­tion is us­ing premises, vehicles or stor­age fa­cil­it­ies be­long­ing to the third party or the lat­ter’s postal ad­dresses, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion con­nec­tion points, com­puter sys­tems or com­puter net­works in or­der to trans­mit, re­ceive or store in­form­a­tion.

² The meas­ure may not be ordered if the third party be­longs to one of the pro­fes­sion­al groups men­tioned in Art­icles 171–173 Crim­PC²¹.

¹ Where the FIS in­tends to or­der an in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion, it shall sub­mit an ap­plic­a­tion to the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court with:

a.

de­tails of the spe­cif­ic ob­ject­ive of the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure and the reas­ons for its ne­ces­sity and an ex­plan­a­tion of why in­vest­ig­a­tions have so far been un­suc­cess­ful, would be without pro­spect of suc­cess or would be un­reas­on­ably dif­fi­cult;

b.

de­tails of the per­sons who will be af­fected by the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure;

c.

a pre­cise de­scrip­tion of the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure and de­tails of its stat­utory basis;

d.

de­tails of any oth­er agen­cies that it is in­ten­ded to in­struct to carry out the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure;

e.

de­tails of when the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure will start and fin­ish and the dead­line by which it must be car­ried out;

f.

the files re­quired for grant­ing au­thor­isa­tion.

² The pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court shall is­sue as a single judge a de­cision with a brief state­ment of reas­ons with­in five work­ing days of re­ceipt of the ap­plic­a­tion; he or she may del­eg­ate this task to an­oth­er judge.

³ The pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court shall not au­thor­ise a re­ques­ted in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure if that meas­ure has already been au­thor­ised in con­nec­tion with crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings against the per­sons con­cerned in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 let­ter b and the crim­in­al in­vest­ig­a­tion is con­nec­tion with a spe­cif­ic threat that the FIS in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure is in­ten­ded to cla­ri­fy. The com­pet­ent courts re­spons­ible for com­puls­ory meas­ures or the Post and Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Sur­veil­lance Bur­eau shall provide the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court with the re­quired in­form­a­tion.

⁴ The pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court may re­quire a hear­ing of rep­res­ent­at­ives of the FIS as part of the de­cision-mak­ing pro­cess.

⁵ He or she may grant au­thor­isa­tion sub­ject to con­di­tions or re­quest fur­ther files or fur­ther in­vest­ig­a­tions.

⁶ Au­thor­isa­tion ap­plies for a max­im­um of three months. This peri­od may be ex­ten­ded in any giv­en case by a max­im­um of three months.

⁷ If an ex­ten­sion is re­quired, the FIS shall file a sub­stan­ti­ated ap­plic­a­tion for an ex­ten­sion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 be­fore the au­thor­ised peri­od ex­pires.

⁸ The pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court shall pre­pare an an­nu­al re­port for the at­ten­tion of the Con­trol Del­eg­a­tion (CDel).

¹ If the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure has been au­thor­ised, the Head of the DDPS, after con­sult­ing the Head of the FD­FA and the Head of the Fed­er­al Justice and Po­lice De­part­ment (FD­JP) shall de­cide on clear­ance for the meas­ure to be car­ried out. Cases of par­tic­u­lar im­port­ance may be sub­mit­ted to the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

² The con­sulta­tion pro­ced­ure must be con­duc­ted in writ­ing.

¹ In cases of ur­gency, the Dir­ect­or of the FIS may or­der the im­me­di­ate use of in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion. He or she shall im­me­di­ately in­form the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and the Head of the DDPS. Either may ter­min­ate the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

² The Dir­ect­or of the FIS shall file the ap­plic­a­tion with­in 24 hours with the pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and shall give reas­ons for the ur­gency.

³ The pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court shall no­ti­fy the FIS of his or her de­cision with­in three work­ing days.

⁴ If the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure has been au­thor­ised, the Head of the DDPS, after con­sult­ing the Head of the FD­FA and the Head of the FD­JP, shall de­cide on clear­ance for the meas­ure to be con­tin­ued.

¹ The FIS shall ter­min­ate the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion im­me­di­ately, if:

a.

the au­thor­ised peri­od has ex­pired;

b.

the re­quire­ments for con­tinu­ing with the meas­ure are no longer ful­filled;

c.

au­thor­isa­tion by the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court or clear­ance from the Head of the DDPS is not gran­ted.

² In cases of ur­gency, the FIS shall en­sure the im­me­di­ate de­struc­tion of the data pro­cured if:

a.

the pres­id­ent of the com­pet­ent di­vi­sion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court re­jects the ap­plic­a­tion;

b.

the Head of the DDPS ter­min­ates the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure with im­me­di­ate ef­fect or re­fuses clear­ance for con­tinu­ation.

³ If oth­er agen­cies are in­volved in car­ry­ing out the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion, the FIS shall no­ti­fy them of its ter­min­a­tion.

⁴ The FIS shall no­ti­fy the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and the Head of the DDPS of the ter­min­a­tion of the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure.

¹ The FIS shall no­ti­fy the per­son be­ing mon­itored with­in one month after con­clu­sion of the op­er­a­tion of the reas­on for and nature and dur­a­tion of mon­it­or­ing us­ing in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion.

² It may post­pone or dis­pense with giv­ing no­ti­fic­a­tion if:

a.

this is ne­ces­sary so as not to jeop­ard­ise an on­go­ing in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure or on­go­ing leg­al pro­ceed­ings;

b.

this is ne­ces­sary due to an­oth­er over­rid­ing pub­lic in­terest in or­der to safe­guard in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity or Swiss for­eign re­la­tions;

c.

no­ti­fic­a­tion could cause ser­i­ous danger to third parties;

d.

the per­son con­cerned can­not be con­tac­ted.

³ Post­pon­ing or dis­pens­ing with no­ti­fic­a­tion must be au­thor­ised and cleared in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 29.

¹ The FIS may carry out the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures it­self, work with do­mest­ic or for­eign agen­cies, or del­eg­ate in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing to such agen­cies provided the oth­er agen­cies guar­an­tee that in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing will be car­ried out in ac­cord­ance with this Act.

² By way of ex­cep­tion, it may also work with private in­di­vidu­als or is­sue private in­di­vidu­als with as­sign­ments if this is re­quired for tech­nic­al reas­ons or to gain ac­cess to the ob­ject of in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing and the per­son con­cerned of­fers a guar­an­tee that in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing will be car­ried out in ac­cord­ance with this Act.

¹ The FIS shall en­sure the pro­tec­tion of its sources and shall pre­serve their an­onym­ity, in par­tic­u­lar that of for­eign in­tel­li­gence ser­vices and se­cur­ity ser­vices and of per­sons who gath­er in­form­a­tion about for­eign coun­tries and are en­dangered as a res­ult. The fore­go­ing does not ap­ply to per­sons who are ac­cused in crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings of ser­i­ous crimes against hu­man­ity or war crimes.

² The FIS shall dis­close the iden­tity of a hu­man source res­id­ent in Switzer­land to the Swiss pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­it­ies if the per­son con­cerned is sus­pec­ted of an of­fence that is pro­sec­uted ex of­fi­cio or if dis­clos­ure is es­sen­tial in or­der to identi­fy the per­pet­rat­or of a ser­i­ous of­fence.

³ The fol­low­ing must be con­sidered in re­la­tion to the pro­tec­tion of sources:

a.

the in­terests of the FIS in con­tinu­ing to use the source for in­tel­li­gence;

b.

the need for hu­man sources in par­tic­u­lar to be pro­tec­ted from third parties;

c.

in the case of tech­nic­al sources: in­form­a­tion that should be kept secret about in­fra­struc­ture, per­form­ance cap­ab­il­it­ies, op­er­a­tion­al meth­ods and pro­ced­ures for pro­cur­ing in­form­a­tion.

⁴ In the event of a dis­pute, the Fed­er­al Crim­in­al Court shall de­cide; the rel­ev­ant pro­vi­sions on mu­tu­al as­sist­ance also ap­ply.

¹ The FIS may cov­ertly gath­er in­form­a­tion about events out­side Switzer­land.

² Where the FIS pro­cures in­form­a­tion in Switzer­land about events out­side Switzer­land, it is bound by the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 4; Art­icle 37 para­graph 2 re­mains re­served.

³ The FIS shall en­sure that the risk in in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing is not dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the ex­pec­ted be­ne­fit of in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing and that in­ter­fer­ence with the fun­da­ment­al rights of the per­sons con­cerned can be lim­ited to what is ne­ces­sary.

⁴ It shall doc­u­ment in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing about events out­side Switzer­land for the at­ten­tion of the su­per­vi­sion and con­trol bod­ies.

⁵ It may store data sep­ar­ately from in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures abroad that are com­par­able with in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion if this is re­quired be­cause of the volume of data, con­fid­en­ti­al­ity or se­cur­ity.

⁶ FIS em­ploy­ees de­ployed abroad shall be in­sured dur­ing their mis­sion un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992²² on Mil­it­ary In­sur­ance against Ill­ness and Ac­ci­dent.

⁷ The FIS shall en­sure the pro­tec­tion of its em­ploy­ees de­ployed abroad.

¹ Where com­puter sys­tems and com­puter net­works loc­ated abroad are used to carry out at­tacks on crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures in Switzer­land, the FIS may in­trude in­to these com­puter sys­tems and com­puter net­works in or­der to dis­rupt, pre­vent or slow down ac­cess to in­form­a­tion. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide on wheth­er such a meas­ure should be car­ried out.

² The FIS may in­trude in­to com­puter sys­tems and com­puter net­works abroad in or­der to gath­er in­form­a­tion about events out­side Switzer­land that is avail­able there or that has been trans­mit­ted from there. The Head of the DDPS shall de­cide after con­sult­ing the Head of the FD­FA and the Head of the FD­JP on wheth­er such a meas­ure should be car­ried out.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may op­er­ate a ser­vice for re­cord­ing elec­tro-mag­net­ic emis­sions from tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tems loc­ated abroad (ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence).

² Ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence has the fol­low­ing pur­poses:

a.

in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing about events out­side Switzer­land that are of sig­ni­fic­ance to se­cur­ity, in par­tic­u­lar re­lat­ing to ter­ror­ism, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of weapons of mass de­struc­tion and for­eign con­flicts that have an ef­fect on Switzer­land;

b.

safe­guard­ing of oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the fields of com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence, and the or­gan­isa­tion and pro­ced­ures for ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence. It shall spe­cify for how long the re­cor­ded com­mu­nic­a­tions and con­nec­tion data may be re­tained by the ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence.

⁴ It shall in par­tic­u­lar en­sure that from the re­cor­ded com­mu­nic­a­tions the ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence:

a.

only passes on in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to events out­side Switzer­land that are of sig­ni­fic­ance to se­cur­ity;

b.

only passes on in­form­a­tion about per­sons in Switzer­land if the in­form­a­tion is re­quired to un­der­stand an event abroad and has been an­onymised be­fore­hand.

⁵ The ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence shall pass on in­form­a­tion about events in Switzer­land ob­tained from the re­cor­ded com­mu­nic­a­tions if the in­form­a­tion provides evid­ence of a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al se­cur­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a.

⁶ If it comes across re­cor­ded com­mu­nic­a­tions in the course of its activ­it­ies that con­tain no in­form­a­tion about events out­side Switzer­land that are of sig­ni­fic­ance to se­cur­ity and no evid­ence of any spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al se­cur­ity, it shall des­troy the re­cord­ings as quickly as pos­sible.

¹ In or­der to gath­er in­form­a­tion about events out­side Switzer­land that are of sig­ni­fic­ance to se­cur­ity (Art. 6 para. 1 let. b) and to safe­guard ad­di­tion­al im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3, the FIS may in­struct the ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence to re­cord cross-bor­der sig­nals from cable-based net­works.

² If both the trans­mit­ter and the re­cip­i­ent are loc­ated in Switzer­land, the re­cor­ded sig­nals in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 may not be used. If the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence can­not sep­ar­ate such sig­nals dur­ing the re­cord­ing pro­cess, the data pro­cured shall be des­troyed as soon as it is es­tab­lished that it ori­gin­ates from such sig­nals.

³ Data from re­cor­ded sig­nals may only be passed on to the FIS if its con­tent cor­res­ponds to the search para­met­ers defined for the op­er­a­tion. The search para­met­ers must be defined so that their ap­plic­a­tion causes as little in­ter­fer­ence as pos­sible in the private do­main of per­sons. De­tails of Swiss nat­ur­al per­sons or leg­al en­tit­ies are not per­mit­ted as search para­met­ers.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.

the per­mit­ted fields of com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence;

b.

the or­gan­isa­tion and the de­tails of the pro­ced­ure for cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence;

c.

the max­im­um peri­od that the ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence may re­tain re­cor­ded con­tent and con­nec­tion data ob­tained from cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence.

¹ Cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence man­dates re­quire au­thor­isa­tion.

² Be­fore the FIS is­sues a man­date for cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence it shall ob­tain the au­thor­isa­tion of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and clear­ance from the Head of the DDPS.

³ The Head of the DDPS shall con­sult the Head of the FD­FA and the Head of the FD­JP be­fore­hand.

¹ If the FIS in­tends to is­sue a man­date for cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence, it shall file an ap­plic­a­tion with Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court that in­cludes:

a.

a de­scrip­tion of the man­date to be is­sued to the ser­vice car­ry­ing out the com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence;

b.

the reas­ons why the op­er­a­tion is ne­ces­sary;

c.

de­tails of the cat­egor­ies of search para­met­ers;

d.

de­tails of the op­er­at­ors of cable-based net­works and the pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that must sup­ply the sig­nals re­quired to con­duct the cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence; and

e.

de­tails of when the op­er­a­tion will start and fin­ish.

² The fur­ther pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by Art­icles 29–32.

³ Au­thor­isa­tion ap­plies for a max­im­um of six months. This peri­od may be ex­ten­ded for a max­im­um of three months in any giv­en case in ac­cord­ance with the same pro­ced­ure.

¹ The ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence re­ceives the sig­nals from the op­er­at­ors and pro­viders in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 41 para­graph 1 let­ter d, con­verts them in­to data and as­sesses on the basis of the con­tent which data is passed on to the FIS.

² It shall only pass on data to the FIS that con­tains in­form­a­tion with­in the search para­met­ers defined for ful­fil­ment of the man­date. It shall only pass on in­form­a­tion about per­sons in Switzer­land to the FIS if the in­form­a­tion is re­quired to un­der­stand an event abroad and has been an­onymised be­fore­hand.

³ If the data con­tains in­form­a­tion about events in Switzer­land or abroad that provides evid­ence of a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al se­cur­ity in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a, the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence shall pass on the data un­changed to the FIS.

⁴ The ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence must des­troy data that does not con­tain any in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 2 and 3 as quickly as pos­sible.

⁵ The FIS is re­spons­ible for the in­tel­li­gence eval­u­ation of the data.

¹ Op­er­at­ors of cable-based net­works and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices are ob­liged to provide the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence or the FIS with the tech­nic­al in­form­a­tion re­quired to carry out the cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence.

² If clear­ance has been giv­en for an op­er­a­tion, op­er­at­ors of cable-based net­works and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices are ob­liged to sup­ply sig­nals to the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence. They must re­move any en­cryp­tion that they have ap­plied.

³ Op­er­at­ors of cable-based net­works and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices are ob­liged to pre­serve secrecy about op­er­a­tions.

⁴ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall com­pensate op­er­at­ors of cable-based net­works and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the level of com­pens­a­tion based on the cost of sup­ply­ing the sig­nals to the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence.

¹ The FIS and the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies are au­thor­ised to pro­cess per­son­al data, in­clud­ing per­son­al data that per­mits an as­sess­ment of the level of risk that a per­son poses, ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er the data are sens­it­ive per­son­al data or not.²³

² The FIS may also pro­cess in­form­a­tion that proves to be dis­in­form­a­tion or false in­form­a­tion if this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to as­sess the situ­ation or a source. It shall mark the rel­ev­ant data as in­cor­rect.

³ It may trans­fer the same data to sev­er­al in­form­a­tion sys­tems. The spe­cific­a­tions for the in­form­a­tion sys­tem con­cerned ap­ply.

⁴ It may re­cord data with­in an in­form­a­tion sys­tem through a net­work and eval­u­ate it auto­mat­ic­ally.

¹ The FIS shall as­sess the rel­ev­ance and ac­cur­acy of per­son­al data be­fore re­cord­ing it in an in­form­a­tion sys­tem. Re­ports that con­tain sev­er­al sets of per­son­al data shall be as­sessed in their en­tirety be­fore they are re­cor­ded in the fil­ing sys­tem.

² It shall only re­cord data that may be used to ful­fil the tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6, sub­ject to com­pli­ance with Art­icle 5 para­graphs 5–8.

³ It shall des­troy data that may not be re­cor­ded in any in­form­a­tion sys­tem or re­turn it to the sender for fur­ther in­vest­ig­a­tion or for pro­cessing on the sender’s own ini­ti­at­ive.

⁴ It shall peri­od­ic­ally check in all in­form­a­tion sys­tems wheth­er the re­cor­ded sets of per­son­al data are still re­quired to carry out its tasks. It shall de­lete data re­cords that are no longer re­quired. In­cor­rect data shall be cor­rec­ted im­me­di­ately or de­leted; Art­icle 44 para­graph 2 re­mains re­served.

⁵ The FIS’s in­tern­al qual­ity as­sur­ance ser­vice shall carry out the fol­low­ing tasks:

a.

it shall re­view the per­son­al data in the sys­tem IASA-GEX FIS (Art. 50) with re­gard to its rel­ev­ance and ac­cur­acy;

b.

it shall peri­od­ic­ally re­view the re­ports from the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies re­cor­ded in the IN­DEX FIS sys­tem (Art. 51) with re­gard to their rel­ev­ance and ac­cur­acy;

c.

it shall veri­fy by ran­dom sample the leg­al­ity, ex­pedi­ency, ef­fect­ive­ness and ac­cur­acy of the data pro­cessing in all FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tems;

d.

it shall de­lete data in the IN­DEX FIS sys­tem that ori­gin­ates from pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions con­duc­ted by the can­tons which was re­cor­ded more than five years pre­vi­ously, and data whose de­le­tion is re­ques­ted by the can­ton;

e.

it shall ar­range in­tern­al train­ing ses­sions for FIS em­ploy­ees on data pro­tec­tion mat­ters.

¹ The can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies shall not main­tain any data­bases of their own in ap­plic­a­tion of this Act.²⁴

² If the can­tons pro­cess data on their own ini­ti­at­ive, they shall en­sure that the can­ton­al data makes no ref­er­ence to the ex­ist­ence or con­tent of fed­er­al data.

³ The can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies may pass on situ­ation as­sess­ments and data that they re­ceive from the FIS if this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to as­sess meas­ures to safe­guard se­cur­ity or to avert a sig­ni­fic­ant danger. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the agen­cies and the ex­tent to which as­sess­ments and data may be passed on.

¹ The FIS shall op­er­ate the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion sys­tems in or­der to carry out its tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6:

a.

IASA FIS (Art. 49);

b.

IASA-GEX FIS (Art. 50);

c.

IN­DEX FIS (Art. 51);

d.

GEVER FIS (Art. 52);

e.

ESD (Art. 53);

f.

OS­INT portal (Art. 54);

g.

Quat­tro P (Art. 55);

h.

ISCO (Art. 56);

i.

re­sid­ual data memory (Art. 57).

² For each FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tem, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.

the cata­logue of per­son­al data;

b.

re­spons­ib­il­it­ies for data pro­cessing;

c.

ac­cess rights;

d.

the fre­quency of qual­ity as­sur­ance, tak­ing ac­count of the ser­i­ous­ness of the in­ter­fer­ence in con­sti­tu­tion­al rights caused by data pro­cessing;

e.

the re­ten­tion peri­od for the data, tak­ing ac­count of the spe­cif­ic needs of the FIS in re­la­tion to the task areas con­cerned;

f.

the de­le­tion of the data;

g.

data se­cur­ity.

The FIS shall al­loc­ate in­com­ing data as fol­lows:

a.

data with in­form­a­tion about vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism: to the IASA-GEX FIS sys­tem;

b.

data with in­form­a­tion that ini­ti­ates ad­min­is­trat­ive pro­cesses only: the GEVER FIS sys­tem;

c.

data with in­form­a­tion re­lated to se­cur­ity meas­ures only: the ESD sys­tem;

d.

data from pub­licly ac­cess­ible sources: the OS­INT portal sys­tem;

e.

data from bor­der and cus­toms checks: the Quat­tro P sys­tem;

f.

data that is used only for task man­age­ment and for con­trolling ra­dio and cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence: the ISCO sys­tem;

g.

oth­er data: the re­sid­ual data memory sys­tem.

¹ The FIS in­teg­ral ana­lys­is sys­tem (IASA FIS) is used for the in­tel­li­gence eval­u­ation of data.

² It con­tains data re­lat­ing to the task areas in Art­icle 6 para­graph 1, with the ex­cep­tion of data on vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees that have the task of re­cord­ing, re­search­ing, eval­u­at­ing and as­sur­ing the qual­ity of the data have on­line ac­cess to IASA FIS. They may carry out data searches with the aid of IASA FIS in all FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tems to which they hold ac­cess rights.

¹ The FIS in­teg­ral ana­lys­is sys­tem for vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism (IASA-GEX FIS) is used for re­cord­ing, pro­cessing and eval­u­at­ing in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism.

² It con­tains data re­lat­ing to vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees that have the task of re­cord­ing, re­search­ing, eval­u­at­ing and as­sur­ing the qual­ity of the data have on­line ac­cess to IASA-GEX FIS.

¹ The IN­DEX FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tem is used:

a.

to es­tab­lish wheth­er the FIS is pro­cessing data re­lat­ing to a per­son, an or­gan­isa­tion, a group, an ob­ject or an event;

b.

to store re­ports pre­pared by the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies;

c.

to pro­cess data from pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions car­ried out by the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies.

² It en­ables au­thor­it­ies that are not con­nec­ted to the spe­cially se­cured FIS net­work to ac­cess data that they need to ful­fil their stat­utory tasks, and the se­cure trans­mis­sion of such data.

³ It con­tains:

a.

data for the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of the per­sons, or­gan­isa­tions, groups, ob­jects and events re­cor­ded in the IASA FIS and IASA-GEX FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tems;

b.

the re­ports pre­pared by the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies in­de­pend­ently or on be­half of the FIS;

c.

data from pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions car­ried out by the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies.

⁴ The fol­low­ing per­sons have on­line ac­cess to the fol­low­ing data in IN­DEX FIS:

a.

FIS em­ploy­ees have ac­cess to the data in para­graph 3 let­ters a and b, provided they have the task of en­sur­ing the early re­cog­ni­tion and pre­ven­tion of threats to Switzer­land and its pop­u­la­tion;

b.

em­ploy­ees of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies in or­der to carry out their tasks in terms of this Act and to pro­cess and pass on their data from pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions and their re­ports to the FIS and to oth­er can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies; only em­ploy­ees of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­ity that car­ried out the pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions and the em­ploy­ees of the FIS qual­ity as­sur­ance ser­vice have ac­cess to data in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter c;

c.

em­ploy­ees of the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Po­lice have ac­cess to the data in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter a in or­der to con­duct se­cur­ity-re­lated, crim­in­al in­vest­ig­a­tion and ad­min­is­trat­ive-poli­cing tasks and to as­sess al­leg­a­tions of money laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ism fin­an­cing con­tained in re­ports from Swiss fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tions;

d.²⁵

the em­ploy­ees of the spe­cial­ist units in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 31 para­graph 2 of the In­form­a­tion Se­cur­ity Act of 18 Decem­ber 2020²⁶ re­spons­ible for car­ry­ing out per­son­nel se­cur­ity screen­ing pro­ced­ures have ac­cess to the data in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter a in or­der to carry out per­son­nel se­cur­ity screen­ing pro­ced­ures and as­sess trust­wor­thi­ness and po­ten­tial for vi­ol­ence.

¹ The FIS in­form­a­tion sys­tem for re­cords and pro­cess man­age­ment (GEVER FIS) is used for the pro­cessing and con­trol of busi­ness and to en­sure ef­fi­cient work pro­cesses.

² It con­tains:

a.

data on ad­min­is­trat­ive trans­ac­tions;

b.

all out­go­ing FIS in­tel­li­gence products;

c.

data that was used to pre­pare con­tent in terms of let­ters a and b;

d.

in­form­a­tion re­quired for the busi­ness con­trols, in par­tic­u­lar in con­nec­tion with per­son­nel se­cur­ity screen­ing pro­ced­ures.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees have on­line ac­cess to GEVER FIS.

¹ The Elec­tron­ic Situ­ation Dis­play sys­tem (ESD) is used by the com­pet­ent fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies and the can­tons as a man­age­ment in­stru­ment and for dis­sem­in­at­ing in­form­a­tion with a view to con­trolling and im­ple­ment­ing se­cur­ity policy meas­ures, in par­tic­u­lar in the event of in­cid­ents in which acts of vi­ol­ence are an­ti­cip­ated.

² It con­tains data about in­cid­ents and about meas­ures to safe­guard in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees and the re­spons­ible fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies that have the task of man­aging se­cur­ity policy or as­sess­ing or deal­ing with situ­ation-rel­ev­ant in­cid­ents have on­line ac­cess to the ESD.

⁴ In the case of spe­cial in­cid­ents, the FIS may also al­low private agen­cies and for­eign se­cur­ity and po­lice au­thor­it­ies tem­por­ary on­line ac­cess. Ac­cess is lim­ited to the data in the sys­tem that these agen­cies and au­thor­it­ies re­quire to ful­fil their tasks in deal­ing with the in­cid­ent con­cerned.

¹ The FIS uses the Open Source In­tel­li­gence Portal (OS­INT portal) to ob­tain data from pub­licly ac­cess­ible sources.

² It con­tains data that is avail­able when us­ing pub­licly ac­cess­ible sources.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees have on­line ac­cess to the OS­INT portal.

⁴ Em­ploy­ees of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies may be al­lowed on­line ac­cess to cer­tain data in the OS­INT portal.

¹ The FIS may op­er­ate an in­form­a­tion sys­tem (Quat­tro P) that is used to identi­fy cer­tain cat­egor­ies of for­eign na­tion­als that enter or leave Switzer­land and to mon­it­or their entry and exit data.

² It con­tains data ob­tained at bor­der posts in the course of bor­der and cus­toms checks which may be used to identi­fy the per­sons and track their travel move­ments.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees that are re­quired to identi­fy per­sons in or­der to ful­fil tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 have on­line ac­cess to Quat­tro P.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine in a non-pub­lic list the cat­egor­ies of per­sons to be re­cor­ded in Quat­tro P; in do­ing so it shall take ac­count of the threat situ­ation at the time.

¹ The com­mu­nic­a­tions mon­it­or­ing in­form­a­tion sys­tem (ISCO) is used to mon­it­or and dir­ect ra­dio and cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence.

² It con­tains data to op­er­ate the in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing equip­ment and for con­trolling and re­port­ing.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees that have the task of car­ry­ing out ra­dio and cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence have on­line ac­cess to ISCO.

¹ The re­sid­ual data memory is used to store data that can­not be im­me­di­ately al­loc­ated to an­oth­er sys­tem in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 48.

²If an in­form­a­tion entry in the re­sid­ual data memory con­tains per­son­al data, an as­sess­ment of rel­ev­ance and ac­cur­acy in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 45 para­graph 1 is made for the entry as a whole and not in re­la­tion to the in­di­vidu­al per­son­al data. An in­di­vidu­al as­sess­ment is made if the per­son­al data is trans­ferred to an­oth­er in­form­a­tion sys­tem.

³ FIS em­ploy­ees that have the task of re­cord­ing, re­search­ing, eval­u­at­ing and as­sur­ing the qual­ity of the data have on­line ac­cess to the re­sid­ual data memory.

⁴ The max­im­um re­ten­tion peri­od for the data is 10 years.

¹ The FIS shall store the data from in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 26 on a case-re­lated basis and sep­ar­ately from the in­form­a­tion sys­tems lis­ted in Art­icle 47.

² It shall en­sure that per­son­al data ori­gin­at­ing from in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion that is not re­lated to the spe­cif­ic threat situ­ation is not used and is des­troyed at the latest 30 days after con­clu­sion of the meas­ure.

³ If the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion relates to a per­son who be­longs to any of pro­fes­sion­al groups men­tioned in Art­icles 171–173 Crim­PC²⁷, data that is not re­lated to the spe­cif­ic threat situ­ation shall be sep­ar­ated and des­troyed un­der the su­per­vi­sion²⁸ of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court. If the in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion relates to an­oth­er per­son, data about which a per­son has the right to re­fuse to testi­fy in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 171–173 Crim­PC must also be des­troyed.

⁴ In spe­cif­ic cases and sub­ject to com­pli­ance with Art­icle 5 para­graphs 5–8, it may also store per­son­al data in the in­form­a­tion sys­tem provided for this pur­pose in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 47 para­graph 1, provided it con­tains in­form­a­tion re­quired to ful­fil tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1.

⁵ FIS em­ploy­ees that have the task of car­ry­ing out a in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure and eval­u­at­ing the res­ults have on­line ac­cess to the rel­ev­ant data.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.

the cata­logue of per­son­al data;

b.

the pro­cessing and ac­cess rights;

c.

the re­ten­tion peri­od for the data and the pro­ced­ure for des­troy­ing data;

d.

data se­cur­ity.

The FIS shall en­sure be­fore dis­clos­ing any per­son­al data or products that the per­son­al data sat­is­fies the leg­al re­quire­ments of this Act and that its dis­clos­ure is law­ful and ne­ces­sary in the case con­cerned.

¹ The FIS shall dis­close per­son­al data to do­mest­ic au­thor­it­ies if this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to safe­guard in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the au­thor­it­ies con­cerned.

² Where in­form­a­tion ob­tained by the FIS may be used by oth­er au­thor­it­ies to pro­sec­ute of­fences, pre­vent ser­i­ous of­fences or to main­tain pub­lic or­der, the FIS shall while pro­tect­ing its sources make this data avail­able to them without be­ing re­ques­ted to do so or on re­quest.

³ The FIS shall al­ways dis­close data from in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion to a pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­ity if it con­tains spe­cif­ic evid­ence of an of­fence in con­nec­tion with the pro­sec­u­tion of which the pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­ity would have been en­titled to or­der a com­par­able crim­in­al pro­ced­ur­al meas­ure.

⁴ The FIS shall ad­vise the pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­it­ies of the ori­gin of the data. The sub­sequent pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the Crim­PC²⁹or the Mil­it­ary Crim­in­al Pro­ced­ure Code of 23 March 1979³⁰.

¹ The FIS may dis­close per­son­al data or lists of per­son­al data to for­eign coun­tries. It shall veri­fy be­fore any dis­clos­ure wheth­er the leg­al re­quire­ments for dis­clos­ure are met.

² If the le­gis­la­tion of the re­ceiv­ing state does not guar­an­tee ap­pro­pri­ate data pro­tec­tion, the per­son­al data may be dis­closed to this state in derog­a­tion from Art­icle 16 para­graph 1 of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Septem­ber 2020³¹ on (FADP) only if Switzer­land main­tains dip­lo­mat­ic re­la­tions with that state and one of the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments is met:³²

a.

Switzer­land is re­quired by law or by an in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment to dis­close the per­son­al data to the state.

b.

Dis­clos­ure is re­quired to safe­guard an over­rid­ing pub­lic se­cur­ity in­terest in Switzer­land or in the re­ceiv­ing state such as pre­vent­ing a ser­i­ous crim­in­al of­fence which is also a ser­i­ous of­fence in Switzer­land or bring­ing its per­pet­rat­ors to justice.

c.

It is ne­ces­sary in or­der to jus­ti­fy a re­quest for in­form­a­tion from Switzer­land.

d.

It is in the in­terest of the per­son con­cerned and this per­son has already con­sen­ted to dis­clos­ure or his or her con­sent may be clearly as­sumed in the cir­cum­stances.

e.

It is ne­ces­sary in or­der to pro­tect the life and limb of third parties.

³ The FIS may in spe­cif­ic cases dis­close per­son­al data to states with which Switzer­land main­tains dip­lo­mat­ic re­la­tions if the re­quest­ing state provides a writ­ten as­sur­ance that it has the con­sent of the per­son con­cerned, and the re­quest­ing state will as a res­ult be able to as­sess wheth­er the per­son con­cerned can par­ti­cip­ate in clas­si­fied pro­jects car­ried out by that for­eign state in re­la­tion to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity or have ac­cess to clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion, ma­ter­i­als or fa­cil­it­ies of that for­eign state.

⁴ It may dis­close per­son­al data on­line to for­eign se­cur­ity agen­cies whose states guar­an­tee an ap­pro­pri­ate stand­ard of data pro­tec­tion and with which Switzer­land has con­cluded an agree­ment in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 70 para­graph 3.

⁵ Per­son­al data may not be dis­closed to a for­eign se­cur­ity agency if the per­son con­cerned will be ex­posed to the risk of be­ing pun­ished twice or of ser­i­ous harm to his or her life, limb or free­dom in terms of the Con­ven­tion of 4 Novem­ber 1950³³on the Pro­tec­tion of Hu­man Rights and Fun­da­ment­al Freedoms or oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments that Switzer­land has rat­i­fied.

⁶ If the per­son­al data is re­quired in leg­al pro­ceed­ings, the rel­ev­ant pro­vi­sions on mu­tu­al as­sist­ance ap­ply.

The dis­clos­ure of per­son­al data to third parties is only per­mit­ted if:

a.

the per­son con­cerned has con­sen­ted to dis­clos­ure or dis­clos­ure is in­dis­put­ably in the in­terest of the per­son con­cerned;

b.

dis­clos­ure is ne­ces­sary in or­der to re­pel a ser­i­ous im­me­di­ate danger;

c.

dis­clos­ure is ne­ces­sary in or­der to jus­ti­fy a re­quest for in­form­a­tion.

¹ The right to in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to the ESD, OS­INT portal and Quat­tro P in­form­a­tion sys­tems, the ad­min­is­trat­ive data in GEVER FIS and data in the stor­age sys­tems in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 36 para­graph 5 and 58 is gov­erned by the FADP³⁴.

² If a per­son re­quests in­form­a­tion on wheth­er the FIS is pro­cessing data on them in the IASA FIS, IASA-GEX FIS, IN­DEX FIS or ISCO in­form­a­tion sys­tems, the re­sid­ual data memory or in the GEVER FIS in­tel­li­gence data, the FIS shall de­fer its re­sponse:

a.

if and to the ex­tent that there are over­rid­ing in­terests that are jus­ti­fied in the files in pre­serving secrecy in re­la­tion to the data about the per­son that is be­ing pro­cessed that are con­nec­ted with:

1.

the ful­fil­ment of a task in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6, or

2.

a pro­sec­u­tion or oth­er in­vest­ig­a­tion;

b.

if and to the ex­tent that it is re­quired be­cause of over­rid­ing in­terests of third parties; or

c.

if no data about the ap­plic­ant is be­ing pro­cessed.

³ The FIS shall no­ti­fy the ap­plic­ant that it is de­fer­ring the pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion and ad­vise the ap­plic­ant that they have the right to re­quest the Fed­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion and In­form­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er (FD­PIC) that he ex­am­ine wheth­er the data, if any, is be­ing law­fully pro­cessed and wheth­er over­rid­ing in­terests in pre­serving secrecy jus­ti­fy the de­fer­ral.

⁴ As soon as there are no longer any in­terests in pre­serving secrecy, but at the latest on ex­piry of the re­ten­tion peri­od, the FIS shall provide the ap­plic­ant with in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with the FADP un­less there is ex­cess­ive work and ex­pense in­volved.

⁵ The FIS shall no­ti­fy per­sons in re­spect of whom no data is be­ing pro­cessed of this fact no later than three years after re­ceipt of their re­quest.

¹ The FD­PIC shall con­duct an ex­am­in­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 63 para­graph 3 if so re­ques­ted by the ap­plic­ant.

² It shall no­ti­fy the ap­plic­ant either that no data re­lat­ing to the ap­plic­ant has been un­law­fully pro­cessed or that it has iden­ti­fied er­rors re­lat­ing to the de­fer­ral of the pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion and has opened an in­vest­ig­a­tion un­der Art­icle 49 FADP³⁵.³⁶

³ …³⁷

⁴ If it iden­ti­fies er­rors while pro­cessing the data or when de­fer­ring the pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion, it shall or­der the FIS to rec­ti­fy the same.³⁸

⁵ If the ap­plic­ant cred­ibly shows that a de­fer­ral of the pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion will cause him or her con­sid­er­able harm that can­not be rec­ti­fied, the FD­PIC may or­der the FIS to is­sue in­form­a­tion im­me­di­ately by way of ex­cep­tion provided this will not pose a risk to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.³⁹

¹ The no­ti­fic­a­tions in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 63 para­graph 3 and 64 para­graph 2 shall al­ways be worded in the same way and do not con­tain a state­ment of reas­ons.⁴¹

² The per­sons con­cerned may not con­test the no­ti­fic­a­tions.

The Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 2004⁴² does not ap­ply to ac­cess to of­fi­cial doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing in terms of this Act.

¹ The FIS shall of­fer data and files that are no longer re­quired or that are ear­marked for de­struc­tion to the Fed­er­al Archives. The Fed­er­al Archives shall archive data and files from the FIS in spe­cially se­cured rooms. They are sub­ject to a 50‑year re­ten­tion peri­od.

² For archive ma­ter­i­als that ori­gin­ate from for­eign se­cur­ity ser­vices, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the re­ten­tion peri­od on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions for a lim­ited peri­od in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 12 of the Archiv­ing Act of 26 June 1998⁴³ if the for­eign se­cur­ity ser­vice con­cerned ex­presses re­ser­va­tions against any in­spec­tion.

³ The FIS may in spe­cif­ic cases in­spect per­son­al data dur­ing the re­ten­tion peri­od that it has passed to the Fed­er­al Archives for archiv­ing in or­der to as­sess spe­cif­ic threats to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity or to safe­guard any oth­er over­rid­ing pub­lic in­terest.

⁴ It shall des­troy data and files that the Fed­er­al Archives has des­ig­nated as not worth archiv­ing.

¹ Where there is an in­tel­li­gence in­terest or oth­er pub­lic in­terest, the FIS may provide ser­vices to oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies in the fol­low­ing areas in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

se­cure trans­mis­sion;

b.

trans­port of goods or per­sons;

c.

ad­vice and situ­ation as­sess­ment;

d.

pro­tec­tion and de­fence against at­tacks on the in­form­a­tion or com­mu­nic­a­tions in­fra­struc­ture or on secrecy.

² Where there is an in­tel­li­gence in­terest, the FIS may also provide the fore­go­ing ser­vices to third parties in Switzer­land or abroad.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ex­er­cise polit­ic­al gov­ernance over the FIS and carry out the fol­low­ing tasks in par­tic­u­lar for that pur­pose:

a.

It shall is­sue the FIS with a ba­sic mis­sion and re­new this mis­sion at least every four years; the ba­sic mis­sion shall re­main secret.

b.

It shall au­thor­ise the watch list in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 72 every year and sub­mit it to the CDel; the watch list is con­fid­en­tial.

c.

It shall de­term­ine the groups every year that must be cat­egor­ised as vi­ol­ent-ex­trem­ist groups and shall take note of the num­ber of vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ists that can­not be as­signed to any known group.

d.

It shall as­sess the threat situ­ation every year and as re­quired in the event of in­cid­ents and shall in­form the Fed­er­al As­sembly and the gen­er­al pub­lic.

e.

It shall or­der the re­quired meas­ures in the case of spe­cial threat situ­ations.

f.

It shall de­cide every year on how the FIS will co­oper­ate with for­eign au­thor­it­ies.

² The doc­u­ments in con­nec­tion with the tasks in para­graph 1 shall not be made ac­cess­ible to the pub­lic.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may on its own ini­ti­at­ive con­clude in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments on the in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion of the FIS in re­la­tion to the pro­tec­tion of in­form­a­tion or par­ti­cip­a­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al auto­mated in­form­a­tion sys­tems in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 12 para­graph 1 let­ter e.

¹ In the event of a ser­i­ous and im­me­di­ate threat, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­struct the FIS to carry out meas­ures in terms of this Act to the ex­tent that these meas­ures are re­quired to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3.

² It shall in each case de­term­ine the dur­a­tion, pur­pose, nature and ex­tent of the meas­ure.

³ In the case of in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion, the au­thor­isa­tion pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 26–33 must be com­plied with.

⁴ If the Fed­er­al Coun­cil is­sues in­struc­tions in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1, it shall in­form the CDel with­in 24 hours.

¹ The watch list con­tains de­tails of or­gan­isa­tions and groups that are reas­on­ably as­sumed to pose a threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

² The as­sump­tion is deemed to be reas­on­able where an or­gan­isa­tion or group ap­pears on a list kept by the United Na­tions or the European Uni­on; in this case, this or­gan­isa­tion or group may be in­cluded on the watch list.

³ An or­gan­isa­tion or group shall be re­moved from the watch list if:

a.

the as­sump­tion that it poses a threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity no longer ap­plies; or

b.

it no longer ap­pears on any list in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 and there are no par­tic­u­lar reas­ons why it should pose a threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set out in an or­din­ance the cri­ter­ia by which the watch list is drawn up; it shall de­term­ine the peri­od­icity for re­view­ing the list.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ban a nat­ur­al per­son or an or­gan­isa­tion or group from car­ry­ing out an activ­ity that poses a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity and dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly serves to propag­ate, sup­port or oth­er­wise pro­mote ter­ror­ist or vi­ol­ent-ex­trem­ist activ­it­ies.

² A ban may be im­posed for a max­im­um of five years. If the re­quire­ments are still met on ex­piry of this peri­od, the ban may be ex­ten­ded for a max­im­um of five fur­ther years.

³ The ap­plic­ant de­part­ment shall reg­u­larly re­view wheth­er the re­quire­ments are still be­ing met. If this is no longer the case, it shall ap­ply to the Fed­er­al Coun­cil for the ban to be lif­ted.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ban an or­gan­isa­tion or group that dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly propag­ates, sup­ports or oth­er­wise pro­motes ter­ror­ist or vi­ol­ent-ex­trem­ist activ­it­ies and thus poses a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

² A ban shall be based on a United Na­tions res­ol­u­tion on a ban or on sanc­tions; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall con­sult the com­mit­tees re­spons­ible for se­cur­ity policy.⁴⁴

³ A ban may be im­posed for a max­im­um of five years. If the re­quire­ments are still met on ex­piry of this peri­od, the ban may be ex­ten­ded for a max­im­um of five fur­ther years.

⁴ Any per­son who on Swiss ter­rit­ory par­ti­cip­ates in an or­gan­isa­tion or group banned un­der para­graph 1, sup­ports it by provid­ing hu­man or oth­er re­sources, or­gan­ises pro­pa­ganda cam­paigns for its aims, re­cruits for it or in any oth­er way pro­motes its activ­it­ies shall, be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing five years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.⁴⁵

^4bis The court may re­duce the pen­alty in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4 (Art. 48aSCC⁴⁶) if the of­fend­er makes an ef­fort to foil the fur­ther activ­it­ies of the or­gan­isa­tion or group.⁴⁷

⁵ It is an of­fence for any per­son to com­mit the fore­go­ing of­fence out­side Switzer­land if that per­son is ar­res­ted in Switzer­land and not ex­tra­dited. Art­icle 7 para­graphs 4 and 5 SCC⁴⁸ ap­plies.

⁶ The pro­sec­u­tion and ad­ju­dic­a­tion of acts un­der para­graphs 4 and 5 are sub­ject to fed­er­al jur­is­dic­tion.⁴⁹

⁷ The re­spons­ible au­thor­it­ies shall no­ti­fy the FIS of any judg­ments, pen­alty or­ders and de­cisions to dis­miss pro­ceed­ings im­me­di­ately and free of charge, provid­ing cop­ies of all re­lated doc­u­ments.⁵⁰

The FIS shall en­sure by means of suit­able qual­ity as­sur­ance and con­trol meas­ures that the law­ful im­ple­ment­a­tion of this Act both with­in the FIS and with­in the can­ton­al se­cur­ity ser­vices is guar­an­teed.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall es­tab­lish an in­de­pend­ent au­thor­ity to over­see the FIS.

² In re­sponse to a pro­pos­al from the DDPS, it shall ap­point the dir­ect­or of the in­de­pend­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity for a term of six years.

³ The dir­ect­or shall be re-ap­poin­ted for a fur­ther term un­less the Fed­er­al Coun­cil rules at the latest six months be­fore the end of the cur­rent term that this is not ap­pro­pri­ate on ob­ject­ively reas­on­able grounds.

⁴ The dir­ect­or may resign from the post as of the end of any month sub­ject to giv­ing six months’ no­tice there­of to the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

⁵ He or she may be re­moved from the post by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil be­fore the ex­piry of the term of­fice if he or she:

a.

breaches his or her of­fi­cial du­ties wil­fully or through gross neg­li­gence; or

b.

be­comes per­man­ently in­cap­able of ex­er­cising of­fice.

¹ The in­de­pend­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall carry out its tasks in­de­pend­ently; it is not bound by dir­ect­ives from oth­er au­thor­it­ies. It is as­signed to the DDPS for ad­min­is­trat­ive pur­poses.

² It has its own budget. It ap­points its own staff.

³ It con­sti­tutes it­self. It shall reg­u­late its or­gan­isa­tion and its work­ing meth­ods in its own pro­ced­ur­al rules.

⁴ The em­ploy­ment con­tracts of the head and the staff of the in­de­pend­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity are gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Per­son­nel Act of 24 March 2000⁵¹. The head is not sub­ject to the as­sess­ment sys­tem in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 4 para­graph 3 of the Fed­er­al Per­son­nel Act.⁵²

¹ The in­de­pend­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall over­see the in­tel­li­gence ser­vice activ­it­ies car­ried out by the FIS, can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies and third parties and oth­er agen­cies del­eg­ated these tasks by FIS. It shall audit these activ­it­ies to con­firm their leg­al­ity, ex­pedi­ency and ef­fect­ive­ness.

² It shall co­ordin­ate its activ­it­ies with par­lia­ment­ary su­per­vi­sion activ­it­ies and with oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al su­per­vi­sion bod­ies.

³ It shall in­form the DDPS about its activ­it­ies in an an­nu­al re­port; this re­port shall be pub­lished.

⁴ It has ac­cess to all rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments and ac­cess to all the premises of the sub­jects of su­per­vi­sion. It may re­quest cop­ies of doc­u­ments. With­in the scope of its su­per­vi­sion activ­it­ies, it may re­quest in­form­a­tion from and may in­spect files held by oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al agen­cies, provided this in­form­a­tion is re­lated to the co­oper­a­tion between these agen­cies and the sub­jects of su­per­vi­sion.

⁵ In or­der to carry out its su­per­vi­sion activ­it­ies, it may have ac­cess to all the in­form­a­tion sys­tems and data­bases of the sub­jects of su­per­vi­sion; it may also have ac­cess to sens­it­ive per­son­al data. It may only store the data thereby ob­tained un­til the audit is com­pleted. The con­trol­lers con­cerned must keep a re­cord of ac­cess to the vari­ous in­form­a­tion sys­tems and data­bases.⁵³

⁶ The in­de­pend­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall provide the DDPS with a writ­ten re­port on the res­ults of its audit. It may is­sue re­com­mend­a­tions.

⁷ The DDPS shall en­sure that the re­com­mend­a­tions are im­ple­men­ted. If the DDPS re­jects a re­com­mend­a­tion, it shall sub­mit the same to the Fed­er­al Coun­cil for a de­cision.

¹ An in­de­pend­ent con­trol au­thor­ity with­in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion shall veri­fy the leg­al­ity of ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence and su­per­vise the con­duct of au­thor­ised and cleared cable com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence as­sign­ments. In car­ry­ing out its tasks, it is not bound by dir­ect­ives from oth­er au­thor­it­ies. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ap­point its mem­bers.

² The con­trol au­thor­ity shall ex­am­ine the as­sign­ments giv­en to the ser­vice car­ry­ing out com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence and the pro­cessing and passing on of in­form­a­tion that this ser­vice has ob­tained. For this pur­pose, it shall be gran­ted ac­cess by the re­spons­ible agen­cies to all rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion and fa­cil­it­ies.

³ It may is­sue re­com­mend­a­tions based on its audit and re­quest that the DDPS ter­min­ate ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions in­tel­li­gence as­sign­ments and de­lete in­form­a­tion. Its re­com­mend­a­tions, re­quests and re­ports are not made pub­lic.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the com­pos­i­tion and the or­gan­isa­tion of the con­trol au­thor­ity, the re­mu­ner­a­tion of its mem­bers and the or­gan­isa­tion of its Sec­ret­ari­at. The term of of­fice amounts to four years.

¹ The DDPS shall in­form the Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­larly about the threat situ­ation and the activ­it­ies of the FIS.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.

fin­an­cial su­per­vi­sion over the spheres of activ­ity of the FIS that re­quire par­tic­u­lar con­fid­en­ti­al­ity;

b.

the min­im­um re­quire­ments for con­trol in the can­tons and the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies of fed­er­al su­per­vi­sion bod­ies.

³ In­ter­na­tion­al ad­min­is­trat­ive agree­ments con­cluded by the FIS that are of long-term dur­a­tion, have sub­stan­tial fin­an­cial con­sequences or of which the Fed­er­al Coun­cil should be no­ti­fied for leg­al or polit­ic­al reas­ons re­quire ap­prov­al by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil. This re­quire­ment of ap­prov­al also ap­plies to un­writ­ten agree­ments. The agree­ments may only be im­ple­men­ted once ap­prov­al is giv­en.

⁴ The DDPS shall in­form the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and the CDel an­nu­ally or as re­quired about the pur­pose and num­ber of ali­as iden­tit­ies be­ing used by em­ploy­ees of the FIS or can­ton­al se­cur­ity agen­cies. The num­ber of newly is­sued iden­tity doc­u­ments must be shown sep­ar­ately.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall in­form the CDel an­nu­ally and as re­quired about bans on activ­it­ies and the res­ults of the reg­u­lar re­view in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 73 para­graph 3 and about bans of or­gan­isa­tions.

¹ Par­lia­ment­ary over­sight of the activ­it­ies of the FIS and the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies act­ing on be­half of the Con­fed­er­a­tion in im­ple­ment­ing this Act is the re­spons­ib­il­ity in their re­spect­ive spheres of the CDel and the Fin­ance Del­eg­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with the Par­lia­ment Act of 13 Decem­ber 2002⁵⁴.

² Can­ton­al par­lia­ment­ary su­per­vis­ory bod­ies may over­see im­ple­ment­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 85 para­graph 1.

¹ Em­ploy­ees of the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies that are en­trus­ted by the can­tons with tasks in terms of this Act are gov­erned by can­ton­al pub­lic ser­vice le­gis­la­tion and sub­ject to the can­ton­al su­per­vi­sion of their su­per­i­ors.

² Su­per­vi­sion in the can­tons is the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the su­per­i­or au­thor­it­ies to the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­ity con­cerned. These au­thor­it­ies may em­ploy a con­trol au­thor­ity in or­der to provide as­sist­ance with su­per­vi­sion; this body must be sep­ar­ate from the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­ity and ac­count­able to the su­per­i­or au­thor­it­ies.

³ In or­der to ex­er­cise its su­per­vis­ory activ­it­ies, the can­ton­al su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall be provided with a list of as­sign­ments is­sued by the FIS and the watch list in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 72.

⁴ The can­ton­al su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity may in­spect the data that the can­ton is pro­cessing on be­half of the Con­fed­er­a­tion. In­spec­tion may be re­fused if es­sen­tial se­cur­ity in­terests so re­quire.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the in­spec­tion pro­ced­ure. In the case of dis­putes, an ac­tion may be brought in the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 120 para­graph 1 let­ter b of the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court Act of 17 June 2005⁵⁵.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the sup­port giv­en to the can­ton­al su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity by fed­er­al agen­cies.

¹ Rul­ings based on this Act is­sued by fed­er­al bod­ies may be con­tested by ap­peal to the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court.

² An ap­peal against a rul­ing on the spe­cial ob­lig­a­tion im­posed on private in­di­vidu­als to provide in­form­a­tion and on a ban on activ­it­ies or or­gan­isa­tions does not have the ef­fect of sus­pend­ing the rul­ing.

³ The peri­od al­lowed for fil­ing the ap­peal against an or­der for an in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ure re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion be­gins on the day that no­tice of the meas­ure is re­ceived.

⁴ Ap­peal de­cisions of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court may be ap­pealed to the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court. The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court Act of 17 June 2005⁵⁶.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions.

¹ The can­tons shall gath­er and pro­cess in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6 para­graph 1 let­ter a without hav­ing to be re­ques­ted to do so or based on a spe­cial as­sign­ment is­sued by the FIS. When do­ing so, the can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies have the power to make use on their own ini­ti­at­ive of in­form­a­tion gath­er­ing meas­ures not re­quir­ing au­thor­isa­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 13–15, 19, 20, 23 and 25.

² The can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies shall sub­mit a re­port to the FIS without hav­ing to be re­ques­ted to do so if they identi­fy a spe­cif­ic threat to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

³ The FIS shall work with the can­tons to im­ple­ment this Act, in par­tic­u­lar by provid­ing tech­nic­al re­sources, through pro­tect­ive and mon­it­or­ing meas­ures and by of­fer­ing joint train­ing courses.

⁴ The can­tons shall with­in the lim­its of their ca­pa­cit­ies sup­port the FIS in im­ple­ment­ing its tasks, in par­tic­u­lar by:

a.

provid­ing the re­quired tech­nic­al re­sources;

b.

or­gan­ising the re­quired pro­tect­ive and ob­ser­va­tion meas­ures;

c.

as­sist­ing with train­ing.

⁵ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall with­in the lim­its of the ap­proved cred­its com­pensate the can­tons for their sup­port in im­ple­ment­ing this Act. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall fix the level of com­pens­a­tion based on the num­ber of per­sons primar­ily em­ployed to carry out fed­er­al tasks.

The re­peal and the amend­ment of oth­er en­act­ments are reg­u­lated in the An­nex.

…⁵⁷

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 Septem­ber 2017⁵⁸