Yesterday the Swiss voters decided by a 66.5% majority to give the government the most surveillance powers in their daily lives.
Last year, the country's parliament passed a law that allowed its secret service, FIS (Federal Information Service), to have greater powers to spy on email messages, phones, and even use hidden cameras and microphones.
These technologies and investigation and surveillance procedures are a common practice in other countries, but they were made illegal by the strict Swiss government.
The law, which the government claimed was necessary after the devastating attacks in Paris by ISIS, was challenged by privacy protection groups and the Swiss left-wing political parties, which delayed its implementation and forced the government to hold a referendum that took place this Sunday.
Thus, the Swiss population, trying to protect itself from increasing threats from terrorist groups, voted to sacrifice its private life for the sake of security.
Switzerland, which lies next to Germany and the Scandinavian countries, has some of the strictest privacy protection laws in Europe. To such an extent that it took Google years to obtain permission to map the country through its Street View service.
The secret service FIS, which is involved in internal and external cyber espionage, and having acquired additional powers, will need a special permit from the court, the Ministry of Defense, and the ministerial council to commence every operation of internal surveillance, according to SwissInfo.
