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

¹ At the re­quest of the Ser­vice, pro­viders of postal ser­vices must de­liv­er to the or­der­ing au­thor­ity or to the au­thor­ity des­ig­nated by the or­der­ing au­thor­ity:

a.

the post ad­dressed to or mailed by the per­son un­der sur­veil­lance;

b.

the data that in­dic­ates with whom, when and from where the per­son un­der sur­veil­lance is or was com­mu­nic­at­ing, as well as the tech­nic­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the post con­cerned (sec­ond­ary data of postal ser­vices).

² The or­der may re­quire real-time sur­veil­lance to be car­ried out and the han­dover of the re­tained sec­ond­ary data of postal ser­vices from past com­mu­nic­a­tions (ret­ro­act­ive sur­veil­lance).

³The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the per­miss­ible types of sur­veil­lance and shall reg­u­late for each type of sur­veil­lance the data to be sup­plied by the vari­ous pro­viders.

⁴ Pro­viders must re­tain the sec­ond­ary data of postal ser­vices spe­cified by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil on the basis of para­graph 3 for 6 months.

⁵ Sub­ject to the pri­or con­sent of the au­thor­ity re­spons­ible for the pro­ceed­ings, the post con­cerned shall be re­turned to the pro­vider, which shall de­liv­er it to the per­son un­der sur­veil­lance.