The use of the tracker in the CMS trigger

The CMS trigger stands for the daunting task of selecting rare signal processes amidst the 40 million bunch crossings per second of the LHC. While information from the tracker is not available in the first hardware trigger level, reconstructed tracks play a crucial role in the subsequent High Level Trigger (HLT). In this contribution an overview of the online selection algorithms that have been developed within the collaboration is given. Then, an outlook toward the even more challenging situation in the luminosity upgrade of the LHC (known as super-LHC). Two proposals to employ the tracker information in the first level selection are briefly outlined.