The head of the newly unified Swiss foreign and domestic intelligence services, Markus Seiler, has called for more counterintelligence personnel.
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In an interview published in the newspapers SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche, Seiler revealed that the intelligence services also plan a greater presence in Swiss embassies.
“As an open country with an open economy and many international organisations, Switzerland is a stomping ground for secret services,” Seiler said, adding that the growing number of spying cases worried him greatly.
“This is why more [Swiss] personnel have to be put in place for counterintelligence,” he said.
Seiler has been in charge of unifying the foreign and domestic services under one ministry following a decision by parliament last year.
From the beginning of 2010 both units will pool data for evaluation, but information gathering will still be carried out separately.
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