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

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.