Recent terrorist attacks and the perceived need to tackle online crime have led to a debate at both national and European level about strengthening national security through online surveillance policies. However, the proposed and partially implemented policies also represent an infringement of personal freedoms through state surveillance.

There already exists a growing body of literature on public attitudes towards government surveillance in general (Davis/Silver 2004; Garcia/Geva 2016; Trüdinger/Steckermeier 2017; Antoine 2022). However, public opinion towards surveillance policies is not a fixed attitude, it is rather formed through an evaluation of a complex situation in which the design of the policies and institutional context matters (Pavone/Esposti, 2010). The effect of the specific technical and legal implementation of surveillance policies thereby remains understudied. This study therefore uses data from an original factorial survey experiment with 1000 participants, to be conducted in Germany in January 2025, to measure public opinion towards government surveillance policies on smartphones.

The analysis will consider the context of implementation, operationalised by the rationale for implementation, either the fight against terrorism or the fight against crime. In addition, the effect of the scope and intrusiveness of the policy will be considered by manipulating the type of data that is monitored and the number of people potentially affected by the surveillance policy. The effect of institutional control will be measured by the presence or absence of mandatory court orders. Finally, the effect of the use of artificial intelligence in the surveillance process will be examined.