Onyx (interception system)

The costs of the system are not public, but the amount of 100 million Swiss francs has been mentioned several times,[1] in particular in 2000 by Werner Marti, SP deputy to the National Council (Switzerland).

In March 2005, journalist Urs Paul Engeler estimated that the costs (hidden in various military construction budgets) reached 400 million CHF.

The goal of the system is to monitor both civil and military communications, such as telephone, fax or Internet traffic, carried by satellite.

[3] The Swiss Federal Council 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) of the ground satellite communication station of Leuk (next to the Onyx site) in 2000.

[10] 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.