The Swiss intelligence community is a group of agencies with responsibilities to protect the interests and infrastructure of Switzerland.
History
The first federal military secret service was set in 1937, a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War. Up to that point, intelligence gathering was left to the responsibility of the police.
As of 1 January 2010, there is a new security policy instrument in Switzerland, the Intelligence Service of the Federation . The new service was created by merging the Service for Analysis and Prevention with the Strategic Intelligence Service. Through the use of synergies and consistent adjustment to the needs of the service recipients a powerful intelligence service was created which is adapted to meet modern requirements and which forms the future contact for all levels of the Confederation and the cantons.
Partners and service recipients
The partners and service recipients of the FIS are the political and military leaders, the federal administration, in particular the departments:
Important partners are also the cantons, including 84 national security agents engaged by the Confederation.
Abroad the FIS maintains contacts to more than 100 intelligence, police and security services throughout the world. These bilateral and multilateral contacts have all been authorised by the Federal Council.
Organization
The FIS's activities and mandate were defined by statute in the
the FIS procures security policy relevant information about other countries and evaluates these
the FIS fulfils intelligence tasks relating to domestic security according to the STA
the FIS ensures a comprehensive assessment of the threat situation.
And according to the
the FIS recognises and combats dangers relating to terrorism, illegal intelligence, violent extremism and proliferation and
identifies attacks against critical information infrastructure.
The thematic and geographic areas of interest are:
In Switzerland these are terrorism and violent extremism, proliferation, attacks against critical infrastructure and illegal intelligence activities.
Abroad, the FIS's thematic areas continue to be proliferation, terrorism, armed forces development, operational areas of our armed forces abroad as well as weapon technology and arms trade.
The geographic areas of interest continue to be Europe, Russia and the CIS states, the Near East and north Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the US and hot spots in Africa.
FIS has collaborated with over 100 foreign intelligence agencies. In 2017, the FIS received approximately 12,500 notifications from foreign intelligence agencies, and sent out 6,000.
Controversies
In 2012, a senior IT technician . In 2014, an agent of the Federal Intelligence Services is involved in a acting for Giroud, the Swiss winemaker.
