Federal Act on Data Protection (Switzerland)

The Federal Act on Data Protection, known in German as the Bundesgesetz ueber den Datenschutz (DSG), is Switzerland's primary federal data protection statute, governing the processing of personal data by federal bodies and by private entities and safeguarding the personality rights and fundamental freedoms of the natural persons whose data is processed; cantonal and municipal authorities instead fall under their own cantonal data protection laws. The original Act was enacted June 19, 1992 and entered into force July 1, 1993. A thoroughly revised version, enacted September 25, 2020, entered into force September 1, 2023 with no transition period, intended to strengthen Swiss data protection and align it with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation while retaining certain differences from it. The Act covers principles for collecting and processing personal data, data subject rights including access, rectification and erasure, cross-border data transfer, data security and breach notification, protections for sensitive personal data, and restrictions on profiling; the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner supervises compliance by federal authorities and private entities.