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

¹ The FIS shall gath­er and pro­cess in­form­a­tion for the fol­low­ing pur­poses:

a.

the early re­cog­ni­tion and pre­ven­tion of threats to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity from:

1.

ter­ror­ism,

2.

es­pi­on­age,

3.

the pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuc­le­ar, bio­lo­gic­al or chem­ic­al weapons, in­clud­ing their de­liv­ery sys­tems, and all ci­vil­ian and mil­it­ary goods and tech­no­lo­gies re­quired to man­u­fac­ture such weapons (ABC pro­lif­er­a­tion) or the il­leg­al trade in ra­dio­act­ive sub­stances, war ma­ter­i­al and oth­er arma­ments,

4.⁴

at­tacks on sup­ply sys­tems for en­ergy and drink­ing wa­ter, in­form­a­tion, com­mu­nic­a­tion and trans­port in­fra­struc­tures and oth­er pro­cesses, sys­tems and fa­cil­it­ies that are es­sen­tial for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the eco­nomy and well-be­ing of the pop­u­la­tion (crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures),

5.

vi­ol­ent ex­trem­ism;

b.

to identi­fy, ob­serve and as­sess events out­side Switzer­land that are of se­cur­ity-policy sig­ni­fic­ance;

c.

to safe­guard Switzer­land’s ca­pa­city to act;

d.

to safe­guard oth­er im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 where the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has is­sued a spe­cif­ic man­date to do so.

² The FIS shall as­sess the threat situ­ation and in­form the fed­er­al agen­cies and can­ton­al ex­ec­ut­ive au­thor­it­ies con­cerned reg­u­larly about any threats and about the meas­ures taken and planned in terms of this Act. If re­quired, it shall alert the state agen­cies re­spons­ible.

³ It shall, while pro­tect­ing its sources, in­form oth­er fed­er­al and can­ton­al agen­cies about events and in­tel­li­gence that are rel­ev­ant to the stat­utory tasks of these agen­cies in safe­guard­ing in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

⁴ It shall cul­tiv­ate in­tel­li­gence re­la­tions between Switzer­land and for­eign agen­cies.

⁵ It is re­spons­ible for provid­ing the in­tel­li­gence early warn­ing in or­der to pro­tect crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­tures.

⁶ It runs pro­grammes to provide in­form­a­tion on and raise aware­ness of threats to in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity.

⁷ It pro­tects its em­ploy­ees, its fa­cil­it­ies, its sources and the data that it pro­cesses.