Editing Swiss Armed Forces (section)

== Intelligence gathering ==
{{See also|Swiss intelligence agencies}}
[[File:Picswiss VS-69-41.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Onyx (interception system)|Onyx]] antennas in [[Leuk]]]]
The Swiss military department maintains the [[Onyx (interception system)|Onyx]] [[List of intelligence gathering disciplines|intelligence gathering]] system, similar to but much smaller than the international [[Echelon (signals intelligence)|Echelon]] system.

The Onyx system was launched in 2000 in order to monitor both civil and military communications, such as [[telephone]], [[fax]] or [[Internet]] traffic carried by [[satellite]]. It was completed in late 2005 and currently consists of three interception sites, all based in Switzerland. In a way similar to Echelon, Onyx uses lists of keywords to filter the intercepted content for information of interest.

On 8 January 2006 the Swiss newspaper ''[[Sonntagsblick]]'' (Sunday edition of the ''[[Blick]]'' newspaper) published a secret report produced by the Swiss government using data intercepted by Onyx.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Carey |first=Henry Frank |date=1 August 2013 |title=The Domestic Politics of Protecting Human Rights in Counter-Terrorism: Poland's, Lithuania's, and Romania's Secret Detention Centers and Other East European Collaboration in Extraordinary Rendition |url=https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325413480176 |journal=East European Politics and Societies |language=en |volume=27|issue=3 |pages=429–465 |doi=10.1177/0888325413480176 |s2cid=147436044 |issn=0888-3254}}</ref> The report described a [[fax]] sent by the [[Egypt]]ian department of Foreign Affairs to the Egyptian [[Embassy]] in [[London]], and described the existence of secret detention facilities ([[black sites]]) run by the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] in [[Central Europe|Central]] and [[Eastern Europe]]. The Swiss government did not officially confirm the existence of the report, but started a judiciary procedure for leakage of secret documents against the newspaper on 9 January 2006.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Investigations against SonntagsBlick|url=http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/folterfluege/artikel30493 |date=1 October 2006 |access-date=21 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060111070821/http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/folterfluege/artikel30493 |archive-date=11 January 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref>