Recording Law for Police & Civil Rights in Alaska

Under Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310(a)(1), it is unlawful for a person to 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 you are a direct participant in the conversation, your own consent satisfies this requirement. The statute defines an "eavesdropping device" in § 42.20.310(b) as any device capable of being used to hear or record 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’s trigger is the consent of a party to the conversation, not the location of the conversation or any expectation of privacy. This rule applies uniformly regardless of whether the conversation occurs in your home, a public park, or any other setting.

No Alaska statute bars recording an on-duty police officer during a public encounter. Because the officer 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 under AS 42.20.310(a)(1). Additionally, video-only recording is not restricted by any statute, as AS 42.20.310 only regulates devices used to hear or record oral conversation. Federal courts have recognized a First Amendment right to record law enforcement officers performing official duties in public: 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). These decisions bind Alaska through the Ninth Circuit. The law includes specific exemptions for police use of recording devices in AS 42.20.320(a)(6)–(8) (e.g., body-worn transmitters to other officers, emergency-communication monitoring), but none of these exemptions restrict what civilians can do when recording their own encounters.

Alaska’s eavesdropping law contains no home-specific carve-out. You can record conversations or encounters inside your own home without violating the wiretapping statute, as long as you are a participant in the conversation. The statute’s trigger is whether you have consented as a party to the conversation under AS 42.20.310(a)(1), not where the conversation takes place. There is one unrelated statute, AS 11.61.123, which criminalizes covertly viewing or recording another person’s private exposure of genitals, anus, or female breast; however, this statute does not function as a general home-recording consent rule and is not implicated by recording disputes or police interactions. If you are recording your own encounter with police inside your home, the one-party consent rule still applies.

A violation of Alaska’s eavesdropping law under AS 42.20.310 is a class A misdemeanor as set forth in AS 42.20.330. This penalty applies if a person uses an eavesdropping device to record an oral conversation without the consent of a party to that conversation. The law includes exemptions for police use of recording devices in specific situations outlined in AS 42.20.320(a)(6)–(8), but these exemptions do not apply to civilian recording. No civil remedy section appears in AS 42.20.300–.390, so there is no private right of action under the wiretapping statute.

Alaska Statutes § 42.20.310(a)(1) prohibits using an eavesdropping device to hear or record all or any part of an oral conversation without the consent of a party to the conversation. The statute defines "oral communication" in § 42.20.390(9) as human speech used to communicate information from one party to another, and "eavesdropping device" in § 42.20.310(b) as any device capable of being used to hear or record oral conversation regardless of the means of communication. The statute’s structure distinguishes between participant recording (governed by § 42.20.310(a)(1)) and third-party interception or divulgence of "private communication" (governed by AS 42.20.300 and defined in § 42.20.390(11) as a communication uttered with a reasonable expectation it is not intercepted). Palmer v. State, 604 P.2d 1106, 1108 n.5 (Alaska 1979), construing the identically-worded predecessor statute AS 11.60.290, confirms that the eavesdropping provision targets third-party interception and is not applicable where one of the participants recorded the conversation.

AS 42.20.320(a)(6)–(8) includes specific exemptions for law enforcement use of recording and interception tools. These exemptions cover: (6) peace officer conduct under AS 12.37; (7) emergency monitoring in barricade, hostage, or explosive situations; and (8) 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 in which the civilian is a participant. These provisions are narrowly tailored to authorize specific law enforcement surveillance operations and do not implicate ordinary civilian recording activities.

Imagine you are pulled over during a traffic stop and decide to record the conversation with the officer using your phone. You speak directly to the officer, so your own consent as a participant satisfies the one-party consent rule for audio under AS 42.20.310(a)(1). You also turn on your phone’s video to capture what is happening. Under Alaska law, this is legal. The officer cannot lawfully prevent you from recording your own conversation or filming the public interaction, and you are not breaking any state law by doing so. If the officer tells you to stop recording, you can point out that Alaska law allows you to record conversations you are part of and that the Ninth Circuit has recognized the right to record police performing official duties in public: 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). The wearer’s own consent as a participant in the conversation satisfies the statutory requirement.

Alaska’s eavesdropping law only regulates devices used to hear or record oral conversation. A silent video recording that does not capture audio does not fall within the statute’s scope. AS 42.20.310 targets "oral conversation" as defined in § 42.20.390(9) as human speech used to communicate information, so video without audio is not covered. The only other potentially relevant statute is AS 11.61.123, which addresses indecent viewing or production of a picture involving private exposure and does not apply to recording police interactions or public disputes. This conclusion follows directly from the plain statutory text.

While Alaska’s eavesdropping law permits participant recording without a privacy threshold, the Alaska Supreme Court has recognized broader privacy protections in the law-enforcement-monitoring context. In State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), the court held under the state constitutional right to privacy (Art. I, § 22) that police must obtain a warrant before conducting consensual electronic monitoring through an informant, even with one party’s consent. This decision restricts government-conducted 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 certain law-enforcement-monitoring contexts, even though the eavesdropping statute itself does not impose a privacy gate for participant recording.

The Alaska Bar Association Ethics Committee adopted Ethics Opinion No. 2003-1, "Undisclosed Recording of Conversations by Lawyer" (approved Dec. 6, 2002; adopted Jan. 24, 2003), which follows the reasoning of ABA Formal Opinion 01-422. The opinion states: 'Like the American Bar Association, this Committee is now of the opinion that electronic recording of a telephone conversation by a lawyer without the consent of the other participant(s) to the conversation is not per se unprofessional conduct if the recording is not prohibited by law or regulation. Undisclosed recording may, however, be unethical if conducted under circumstances, or the recording is used in a manner, that is otherwise prohibited by the Rules of Professional Conduct. The Committee therefore withdraws Ethics Opinions 78-1, 91-4, and 92-2.' The opinion expressly adopts ABA Formal Opinion 01-422’s reasoning and holds that while the better practice may be for attorneys to disclose or obtain consent prior to recording a conversation, attorneys are not per se prohibited from ever recording conversations without the express permission of all other parties to the conversation. Absent conduct reflecting actual misrepresentation, deceit or fraud when taping the conversation, or circumstances in which the taping violated existing law or infringed on a specific court-defined privacy right, an attorney does not act unethically by recording a conversation with a third party without disclosure of such recording. Footnote 2 states: 'If a court determines that an attorney's undisclosed recording violates the Alaska constitutional right of privacy or some other law, then such undisclosed recording would also be unprofessional.'