Swiss Voters Approve Law Enhancing Intelligence Agencies Powers

The Swiss voted in favour of a new law providing the country's intelligence services with a wide range of surveillance options, the preliminary results on the government website indicated.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — With 41 percent of population having participated in the Sunday vote, 65.5 percent cast their ballots for the law that would sanction private communications surveillance, including mail and telephone, installment of "Trojan horse" computer programs, cameras and microphones as well as other measures.

According to the Swiss authorities, the intelligence services would only be able to monitor and record private communications if they could properly justify such a necessity.

The Swiss Federal Council had earlier recommended the citizens to vote in favour of the bill.

"This new law will provide Switzerland with up-to-date techniques to respond to the threat against our country," Guy Parmelin, the member of the Swiss Federal Council, said at the press conference, when commenting on the preliminary results.