Federal Act
on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications
(SPTA)

In re­la­tion to sur­veil­lance of post and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, the Ser­vice has the fol­low­ing gen­er­al tasks:

a.

It shall con­tact the or­der­ing au­thor­ity and the ap­prov­ing au­thor­ity im­me­di­ately be­fore post or in­form­a­tion is passed on to the or­der­ing au­thor­ity if, in its opin­ion, the sur­veil­lance or­der:

1.

in the case of sur­veil­lance in the course of crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings, does not con­cern a crim­in­al of­fence for which sur­veil­lance is per­mit­ted un­der the ap­plic­able law;

2.³⁶

has not been is­sued by the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity or, pur­su­ant to Art­icles 29–31 In­telSA³⁷, has not been ap­proved and gran­ted per­mis­sion to pro­ceed; or

3.

is in­com­plete or un­clear.

b.

It shall con­tact the or­der­ing au­thor­ity and the ap­prov­ing au­thor­ity im­me­di­ately if, in its opin­ion, the sur­veil­lance is tech­nic­ally in­ap­pro­pri­ate, does not cor­res­pond to the sur­veil­lance types provided for by law or in the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions or is not tech­nic­ally feas­ible.

c.

It shall provide the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with the in­form­a­tion re­quired to or­der sur­veil­lance; if ne­ces­sary, it shall re­quest the en­tit­ies ob­liged to co­oper­ate to provide it with this in­form­a­tion.

d.

It shall in­struct the en­tit­ies ob­liged to co­oper­ate on how to carry out the sur­veil­lance, re­quest them to take the ne­ces­sary meas­ures for the sur­veil­lance and su­per­vise the im­ple­ment­a­tion of the sur­veil­lance.

e.

It shall im­ple­ment the meas­ures ordered by the ap­prov­ing au­thor­ity to pro­tect pro­fes­sion­al secrecy.

f.

It shall check wheth­er sur­veil­lance ex­tends bey­ond the ap­proved peri­od and ter­min­ate it at the end of the peri­od if it has not been sent a copy of the re­new­al ap­plic­a­tion.

g.

It shall no­ti­fy the ap­prov­ing au­thor­ity im­me­di­ately of the ter­min­a­tion of sur­veil­lance.

h.

It shall fol­low the tech­nic­al de­vel­op­ments in re­la­tion to postal and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices.

i.

It shall or­gan­ise and carry out train­ing for per­sons who are al­lowed to ac­cess the pro­cessing sys­tem.

j.

It may, on re­quest, ad­vise au­thor­it­ies and en­tit­ies ob­liged to co­oper­ate on tech­nic­al, leg­al and op­er­a­tion­al as­pects of sur­veil­lance of post and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions.

k.

It shall pro­duce stat­ist­ics on sur­veil­lance.