In 2016, it was dissolved by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and replaced by the Direction des services de sécurité.

[1] The DRS was formed as the Ministère de l'Armement et des Liaisons générales (MALG) during the Algerian War for independence, under the direction by Abdelhafid Boussouf, whose role was to lead both the national and international networks of the Front de libération nationale (FLN).

After independence in 1962, and particularly with the accession of Houari Boumédiène to the leadership of the country in 1965, the Algerian intelligence services greatly professionalised and institutionalised.

Chadli appointed to the chair of the DGPS general Lakehal Ayat, reorganising the agency to work solely in foreign intelligence.

[2] It was in this period that the DRS reasserted its role in internal security, becoming an active player in the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s.