In 1989, Switzerland’s Fichenaffäre revealed that the federal authorities and cantonal police had operated a system of mass surveillance against citizens and foreigners. A special parliamentary commission, the PUK EJPD, reported in November 1989 that the domestic-intelligence agency Bundespolizei (BUPO, now the Swiss Federal Police) had accumulated more than 900,000 secret files. The records targeted Eastern European nationals, but also Swiss citizens, companies, organizations, and predominantly left-wing political groups, often without evidence of criminal convictions.
The scandal widened in March 1990 when Parliament created the PUK EMD to investigate the Defence Ministry’s intelligence department, UNA. Its November 1990 report confirmed additional illegal files and exposed P-26, a secret stay-behind army, and P-27, a covert intelligence-gathering unit concealed within military intelligence. About 300,000 people sought access to their files. BUPO was reorganized, parliamentary oversight began in 1992, and records were transferred to the Swiss Federal Archives. A 2005 Geneva trial nevertheless showed that police files still documented decades of demonstrations and political activity involving people who had never been convicted.
