Recording Law for Phone & Video Calls in Alaska

Alaska follows a one-party consent rule for recording conversations, including phone and video calls. That means if you're on the call, you can record it without telling the other person. The law is found in Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310, within the Article "Communications, Eavesdropping, and Wiretapping," which bars using an "eavesdropping device" to hear or record an "oral conversation" without the consent of a party to the conversation. Since you're a party, your consent satisfies the law. This applies whether the call is a regular phone call, a Zoom meeting, a FaceTime chat, or any other video call platform. The law doesn't care where you are when you make the call—your home, office, or elsewhere—so long as you're part of the conversation.

Alaska Statutes § 42.20.390, within the Article "Communications, Eavesdropping, and Wiretapping," defines "oral communication" as "human speech used to communicate information from one party to another." The key phrase in the recording law is "oral conversation," which the statute uses without requiring the conversation to be private or confidential. This covers phone calls, video calls, and in-person chats. The law focuses on whether you're a participant in the conversation, not the nature of the discussion.

If you record only video without capturing any audio, Alaska law doesn't restrict that. The eavesdropping statute only applies to devices used to "hear or record ... oral conversation," and a silent video recording doesn't fall under that definition because it does not capture speech. The law defines "oral communication" as speech, so video-only recordings aren't covered. This means you can film a meeting or conversation without audio without worrying about Alaska's wiretapping law. However, Alaska Statutes § 11.61.123 criminalizes covertly viewing or recording another person's private exposure of genitals, anus, or breast, which could theoretically apply in certain covert recording scenarios involving nudity, though it is not a general home-recording consent rule and is not implicated by recording disputes or police interactions.

Alaska has no law against recording on-duty police officers in public, and federal courts in the Ninth Circuit (which includes Alaska) have recognized a First Amendment right to record police performing official duties in public. Since you're a participant in the encounter, your own consent satisfies Alaska's one-party consent rule for the audio portion. The Ninth Circuit cases Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436 (9th Cir. 1995) and Askins v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035, 1044 (9th Cir. 2018) support this right. While there's no Alaska-specific case directly addressing this, the federal precedent applies to Alaska. This means you can legally record police interactions in public spaces like streets or parks.

Say you're a remote worker in Alaska and you're on a mandatory Zoom call with your team and your manager. The call covers project updates and performance feedback. You decide to record the call for your own notes using your laptop's built-in recorder. Since you're a participant in the conversation, Alaska law allows this without telling anyone else. The recording captures both audio and video, but even if it only captured video without audio, that would also be allowed. The key is that you're part of the call, so your consent satisfies the one-party rule under Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310.

Recording someone without their consent when you're not a party to the conversation is a class A misdemeanor in Alaska. The law is found in Alaska Statutes § 42.20.330, within the Article "Communications, Eavesdropping, and Wiretapping." However, if you're a participant in the conversation, you're legally allowed to record, so this penalty doesn't apply to you. The misdemeanor applies only to third-party interceptions—someone secretly recording others without being part of the conversation. For participants, the one-party consent rule means you're on solid legal ground.

Alaska's one-party consent rule applies uniformly across locations and communication methods, but there are important limits. The statute targets third-party interception, not a participant's own recording, as confirmed by Alaska Supreme Court case law interpreting the identically-worded predecessor statute: Palmer v. State, 604 P.2d 1106, 1108 n.5 (Alaska 1979). Separately, State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), held that under Alaska's state constitutional right to privacy (Art. I, § 22), police must obtain a warrant before conducting consensual electronic monitoring through an informant even with one party's consent—this restricts government-conducted surveillance operations, not an ordinary civilian's own wearable recording of their own encounters. Additionally, Alaska Statutes § 42.20.320(a)(6)-(8) include law-enforcement exemptions about officers' own use of recording tools, but none restrict a civilian's right to record police.