Swiss secret service did not break the law, inquiry finds

The FIS gathers information about incoming hacks and cyber attacks aimed at Swiss targets. © Keystone / Christian Beutler

An inquiry into the information-gathering practices of the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) has cleared the agency of criminal wrong-doing.

The probe did however judge that the agency did not correctly interpret sections of the law on information secrecy, and obtained some information illegally, the defense ministry said on Monday.

An investigation was opened at the start of this year regarding information gathered by the FIS’s cyber division between 2015 and 2020, concerning possible cyber-attacks in the country.

While gathering data about potentially malicious actors – including directly from internet providers – the FIS neglected to get the required authorisation of a federal court. The practice was stopped as soon as the FIS was alerted to the problem in 2020.

Ex-federal judge Niklaus Oberholzer, who led the administrative inquiry, said on Monday that while the practice did not amount to criminal activity, it did amount to a bad interpretation of the legal situation, in that the FIS did not properly consider certain provisions of the law on information secrecy.

The final report into the affair was classified as secret. However, the defense ministry published an overview of the main results, as well as an extract of the recommendations proposed for the FIS, hereExternal link.

The classified findings have been sent to the relevant parliamentary committee as well as the watchdog which oversees the secret services.