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

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 6 para­graph 2 of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992²⁵ on Data Pro­tec­tion (FADP) only if Switzer­land main­tains dip­lo­mat­ic re­la­tions with that state and one of the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments is met:

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 1950²⁶ on 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.