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

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).