What are the main obligations of a full telecom provider under Art. 26 BÜPF?
Deliver data (content & metadata), retain metadata for 6 months, supply necessary technical data, tolerate surveillance, and remove encryption they applied — with a possible exemption for minor services granted by the Federal Council.
A full carrier (Swisscom, Sunrise, Salt) carries the heaviest set of duties under Art. 26:
- Deliver data — both the content of communications and the Randdaten (metadata / "edge data": who, when, how long, where).
- Retain metadata for 6 months — the figure most worth memorising.
- Supply the technical data needed to make a surveillance feasible.
- Tolerate the surveillance — a duty to permit and actively cooperate.
- Remove encryption it applied itself (with the crucial nuance below).
As a relief valve, the Federal Council may exempt services of minor importance from some of these duties.
The lighter tiers (Art. 27–29) are a deliberate step down: those parties only have to grant access to their facilities, supply necessary technical data, and hand over whatever metadata is available — there is no equivalent of the full 6-month retention duty. Obligations scale with how central the party is to the communication.
The crucial nuance is what "remove encryption" actually means. The provider must strip encryption it applied — transport encryption it controls — but this does not let it break end-to-end encryption applied by the user or by an over-the-top messenger, because the carrier never held those keys. That single distinction is the heart of the whole "going dark" debate: lawful interception can compel the carrier, yet cannot magically defeat encryption it was never party to.
Tip: Remember Art. 26 as "deliver, retain 6 months, enable, tolerate, decrypt-what-you-encrypted."
Go deeper:
Post & telecom surveillance — procedure (li.admin.ch) — what a provider must deliver (content + metadata) and the intermediary role of the Dienst ÜPF.- CALEA — mandated interception capability (EFF) — the parallel US carrier-assistance mandate and the "going dark" debate the decryption clause sits inside.