Inquiry launched over alleged breaches by Swiss secret service

The case of allegedly illegal information gathering involves about 100 cyber attacks over a period of five years. © Keystone

The Swiss defence ministry has ordered a probe into suspected illegal practices of information gathering by the country's intelligence service.

Its cyber unit allegedly collected information on hacker attacks between 2015 and 2020 without requesting the necessary official permission.

The investigation is to establish whether the secret service employees were aware of the breaches or whether they acted out of negligence.

In more than 100 cases, the cyber attacks were launched against Switzerland or Swiss interests from foreign hackers, or from Switzerland against targets abroad, according to a statement by the defence ministry on Wednesday.

The Federal Intelligence ServiceExternal link said it suspended these activities last April and its director handed in his resignation soon afterwards.

On Thursday, the parliamentary control committee announced it saw no reason to launch its own investigation in the cyber unit.

The committee said it considered the information gathering as very problematic from a legal point of view, but it was waiting for the findings of the administrative probe.