Recording Law for Recording at Home in Alaska

Alaska law allows a participant to record an oral conversation without the consent of any other party. Under Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310(a)(1), a person may not use an eavesdropping device to hear or record all or any part of an oral conversation without the consent of a party to the conversation. Because the wearer is a party to the conversation, their own consent satisfies the statute’s requirement. This one-party consent rule applies uniformly regardless of location, including inside one’s own home or another’s residence. No exception exists in the eavesdropping chapter for private homes or residences.

Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310(b) defines an eavesdropping device as any device capable of being used to hear or record an oral conversation whether the conversation is conducted in person, by telephone, or by any other means; provided that this definition does not include devices used for the restoration of the deaf or hard-of-hearing. The statute regulates devices used to hear or record oral speech, not silent video-only recordings. A device that captures only video without audio does not fall within the statute’s scope because it is not used to hear or record an oral conversation. Alaska Statutes § 42.20.390(9) defines "oral communication" as human speech used to communicate information from one party to another, reinforcing that the statute targets audio capture of speech.

A violation of Alaska’s eavesdropping statute is a class A misdemeanor under Alaska Statutes § 42.20.330. The penalty applies to any person who violates the provisions of AS 42.20.300 or AS 42.20.310. There is no private right of action under the eavesdropping chapter; enforcement is limited to criminal prosecution. The statute targets the act of using an eavesdropping device to intercept an oral conversation without the consent of a party to the conversation. The location of the conversation or the content of the recording does not alter the penalty classification.

Alaska Statutes § 11.61.123 criminalizes covertly viewing or producing a picture of another person’s private exposure of genitals, anus, or female breast without their consent. This statute is narrow and applies only when the person is in a state of undress. It does not create a general home-recording consent rule and is not implicated by routine conversation recording or police interactions. The statute is a separate, unrelated offense from the eavesdropping provisions and carries its own penalty structure.

Imagine you are in your apartment with a roommate and an argument arises. You begin recording the conversation on your phone to document what is said. Under Alaska law, this is permissible because you are a party to the conversation and the one-party consent rule in Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310(a)(1) is satisfied. The recording may be used later if needed. The statute does not require you to inform the roommate that you are recording. However, if the roommate were undressed and you recorded video without their knowledge, that could violate the separate indecent viewing statute under AS 11.61.123.

Alaska has no statute that bars recording an on-duty police officer in public. Because the wearer is a direct participant in the encounter, their own consent as a party to the conversation satisfies the one-party consent rule for the audio portion of the recording. Federal courts have recognized a First Amendment right to record law enforcement officers engaged in the exercise of their official duties in public places: Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436 (9th Cir. 1995), and Askins v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035, 1044 (9th Cir. 2018) ("includes the right to record law enforcement officers engaged in the exercise of their official duties in public places"). The Ninth Circuit holdings are binding precedent applicable to Alaska. No Alaska-specific case squarely deciding this issue has been located, but the absence of a contrary state statute and the binding federal precedent resolve the question.

Alaska Statutes § 42.20.320 lists specific exemptions to the eavesdropping rules, including provisions governing peace officer conduct under AS 12.37, emergency monitoring in barricade or hostage situations, and peace officers’ use of body-worn transmitters to other officers. None of these exemptions restrict a civilian’s right to record police or other encounters. The statute’s structure distinguishes between third-party interception and participant recording, with participant recording governed solely by the one-party consent rule in AS 42.20.310(a)(1).

Alaska’s constitutional right to privacy, found in Article I, § 22 of the Alaska Constitution, imposes additional constraints on government-conducted electronic monitoring. In State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), the Alaska Supreme Court held that police must obtain a warrant before conducting consensual electronic monitoring through an informant, even with one party’s consent. This decision restricts government surveillance operations but does not affect an ordinary civilian’s own wearable recording of their own encounters. The case demonstrates that Alaska affords broader privacy protection than federal law in the law-enforcement-monitoring context, while leaving the civilian participant-recording rule intact.