Onyx is a Swiss intelligence gathering system maintained by the Federal Intelligence Service - Nachrichtendienst des Bundes (NDB). The costs of the system are not public, but the amount of 100 million Swiss francs has been mentioned several times, in particular in 2000 by

Werner Marti Werner Marti (born 20 April 1957 in Glarus; Place of origin: Sool) is a Swiss lawyer and politician in the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SP). He was a member of the Swiss National Council from 1991 until the end of 2008. Biography Wer ...

, SP deputy to the

National Council (Switzerland) The National Council (german: Nationalrat; french: Conseil national; it, Consiglio nazionale; rm, Cussegl naziunal) is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, the upper house being the Council of States. With 200 seats, the ...

. In March 2005, journalist Urs Paul Engeler estimated that the costs (hidden in various military construction budgets) reached 400 million CHF. The Onyx system was launched in 2000, originally under the name SATOS-3 (the SATOS 1 and 2 systems were started in 1992, in particular to intercept faxes), and was completed in late 2005.

Purpose

The goal of the system is to monitor both civil and military communications, such as telephone, fax or Internet traffic, carried by satellite. Onyx uses lists of keywords to filter the intercepted content for information of interest, and the choice of keywords by the intelligence community must be approved by an independent commission. The system is not supposed to monitor internal communications; however, the monitoring of a communication between a person in Switzerland and someone in another country is allowed.Système d'interception des communications par satellite du Départment fédéral de la défense, de la protection de la population et des sports (projet "Onyx")
Report from the National Council (Parliament) on Onyx, 10 November 2003 The

Swiss Federal Council The Federal Council (german: Bundesrat; french: Conseil fédéral; it, Consiglio federale; rm, Cussegl federal) is the executive body of the federal government of the Swiss Confederation and serves as the collective head of state and governm ...

has indicated that Onyx is not linked to other foreign systems such as ECHELON; according to the Council, the confusion and rumours about this issue are due to the sale by Swisscom to Verestar (now

SES Americom SES Americom was a major commercial satellite operator of North American geosynchronous satellites based in the United States. The company started as RCA Americom in 1975 before being bought by General Electric in 1986 and then later acquired b ...

) of the ground satellite communication station of

Leuk Leuk (french: Loèche-Ville) is a municipality in the district of Leuk in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. On 1 January 2013, the former municipality of Erschmatt merged into the municipality of Leuk. * Zimmerwald (

Canton of Berne The canton of Bern or Berne (german: Kanton Bern; rm, Chantun Berna; french: canton de Berne; it, Canton Berna) is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. Its capital city, Bern, is also the ''de facto'' capital of Switzerland. ...

) * Heimenschwand (part of the municipality of Buchholterberg, Canton of Berne) : 3 antennas. *

Intercepted black sites fax

On 8 January 2006, the Swiss newspaper '' Sonntagsblick'' (Sunday edition of the ''

Blick ''Blick'' is a Swiss German-language daily newspaper, and online news website covering current affairs, entertainment, sports and lifestyle. History and profile ''Blick'' was established in 1959. The newspaper was the first Swiss tabloid public ...

'' newspaper) published a secret report produced by the Swiss government using data intercepted by Onyx.Decision of the military tribunal
of 17 April 2007 . Includes the original article from the Sonntagsblick with the copy of the fax. The report described a fax sent by the Egyptian department of Foreign Affairs to the Egyptian Embassy in London, and described the existence of secret detention facilities ("black sites") run by the CIA in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

. The Swiss government did not officially confirm the existence of the report, but started a military judiciary procedure for leakage of secret documents against the newspaper on 9 January 2006. While the authenticity of the fax was implicitly confirmed during the trial, the reporter and newspaper were cleared of all charges on 17 April 2007.

Swissinfo SWI swissinfo.ch is a multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the wor ...

Reporters cleared of revealing military secret
17 April 2007

Notes and references

External links

* Swiss Federal Council
Système d’interception des communications par satellite du Département fédéral de la défense, de la protection de la population et des sports (projet «Onyx») — Rapport de la Délégation des Commissions de gestion des Chambres fédérales du 10 novembre 2003 — Avis du Conseil fédéral
24 March 2004 .

Legal basis for the system

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Onyx (Interception System) Military of Switzerland Espionage Signals intelligence Swiss intelligence agencies