Recording Law for Phone & Video Calls in Arizona

Arizona lets you record any phone call or video call you’re part of without telling the other people. This comes from Arizona’s wiretap law, A.R.S. § 13-3005, which makes it a class 5 felony to unlawfully intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication under subsection A and a class 6 felony to install a pen register or trap-and-trace device without required consent under subsection B. The law then provides a consent exemption: interception is lawful if one party to the conversation consents or a person who is present during the conversation consents. That exemption is spelled out in A.R.S. § 13-3012(9). So if you’re on a Zoom call, a FaceTime chat, or a Teams meeting, you can hit record without informing the other participants. The same rule applies whether the call is work-related, personal, or with a stranger. The only exception is if you’re secretly recording someone in a private place where they expect privacy—more on that below.

Arizona’s wiretap statute covers “wire communications” (traditional phone calls), “electronic communications” (calls sent over the internet like VoIP or app-based video chats), and “oral communications” (in-person speech). For phone and video calls, the key definitions are “wire communication” and “electronic communication” in A.R.S. § 13-3001. These terms don’t depend on whether the conversation happens in your home, at work, or in public. The law treats all of these the same: if you’re part of the call, you can record it without consent because Arizona is a one-party consent state. Silent video-only recording (no audio) isn’t covered by the wiretap statute at all, because the law only restricts the “aural or other acquisition of the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication” under A.R.S. § 13-3001(7), and video without audio isn’t acquiring the contents of a spoken exchange. Video recording is instead governed by A.R.S. § 13-3019, a separate statute that criminalizes surreptitious photographing or videotaping of a person’s nudity, undressing, sexual activity, or genitalia/buttocks/female breast in a place carrying a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as a restroom, bathroom, locker room, or bedroom.

Arizona has no law that bans recording on-duty police officers in public. Arizona once tried to make it a crime to record police within 8 feet after a warning under HB2319 (2022), but a federal judge preliminarily enjoined that law on September 9, 2022 (D. Ariz., Judge John Tuchi), and the Arizona Attorney General agreed to a permanent injunction and settlement on July 21, 2023 in Arizona Broadcasters Ass'n v. Brnovich (D. Ariz., permanent injunction entered July 21, 2023), so it can’t be enforced. The Ninth Circuit, which covers Arizona, has recognized a First Amendment right to record on-duty police officers performing official duties in public: Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436 (9th Cir. 1995) (right to film matters of public interest, including police, in public), and Askins v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035, 1044 (9th Cir. 2018) (right to record extends to law enforcement officers in public places, subject to reasonable time/place/manner restrictions). So if you’re on a public street, in a park, or anywhere else where police are performing official duties in view of the public, you can record them—even if they tell you to stop. The only limit is if your recording disrupts their work or violates other laws (like trespassing).

Arizona doesn’t have a special rule for recording inside your own home versus somewhere else. The one-party consent standard applies everywhere. The only exception is a separate law, A.R.S. § 13-3019, which makes it a crime to secretly record someone who is nude, undressing, or engaged in sexual activity in a restroom, bathroom, locker room, bedroom, or other place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, or to capture footage of a person’s genitalia, buttocks, or female breast not otherwise visible to the public. That law doesn’t apply to openly recording a dispute or conversation in your living room or kitchen. For in-person conversations outside your home, the rule turns on whether the speaker has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private under A.R.S. § 13-3001(8), which defines an “oral communication” as speech uttered by a person who exhibits an expectation that the communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying the expectation. Courts look at the specific facts: in State v. Hauss, 142 Ariz. 159, 688 P.2d 1051 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1984), an Arizona appeals court said recording a conversation in a police interrogation room wasn’t illegal because the speakers had no reasonable expectation of privacy there.

Recording a conversation without the required consent can be a felony under A.R.S. § 13-3005. Subsection A makes it a class 5 felony to unlawfully intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication, while subsection B makes it a class 6 felony to install a pen register or trap-and-trace device without required consent. There’s also a civil penalty: if someone sues you under A.R.S. § 12-731, they can recover actual damages, up to $100 per day or $10,000 in statutory damages (whichever is greater), plus punitive damages and attorney fees, with a one-year statute of limitations. The law also lets the state sue to enforce it. So while Arizona’s one-party consent rule is broad, the consequences for violating it can be serious. That’s why it’s safest to record only conversations you’re part of or to get consent when you’re unsure.

Imagine you’re on a weekly Zoom team meeting with five coworkers. The discussion turns to a disagreement about a project deadline. You start recording the call on your laptop to keep a record of what was said. Under Arizona law, this is allowed because you’re part of the conversation. The recording isn’t limited to your home—it could be from a coffee shop, your office, or anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that you’re a participant. If one of your coworkers later claims the recording was illegal, Arizona’s wiretap law doesn’t protect them because you had one-party consent. The same would apply if you recorded a FaceTime call with a friend or a Teams meeting with a client.

Arizona’s voyeurism statute, A.R.S. § 13-3019, criminalizes surreptitious or hidden photographing or videotaping of a person in a restroom, bathroom, locker room, bedroom, or other place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy while nude, dressing or undressing, or engaged in sexual activity, or footage that captures a person’s genitalia, buttocks, or female breast not otherwise visible to the public. This law is aimed at hidden or secret recording of private bodily exposure, not at open wearable-device recording of disputes or interactions with others (including police) in a person’s own home; it would not typically apply to the stated use case of openly capturing disputes or interactions, but could be implicated if the wearable inadvertently captured someone nude or undressing in a private area of a home without consent. Outside these narrow scenarios, Arizona’s one-party consent rule governs recording in private spaces just as it does in public.