Guides
Is It Legal to Record a Conversation in Hawaii?
Key facts
- ·Hawaii is a one-party consent state—you can record any conversation you’re part of without telling others.
- ·Recording on-duty police in public is explicitly protected by state law and Hawai‘i Supreme Court precedent.
- ·Recording in private places without consent is prohibited, even if you’re part of the conversation.
- ·Silent video recording is usually allowed in public but restricted in private places.
- ·Violations can lead to felony or misdemeanor charges, plus civil lawsuits for damages.
- ·Lawyers in Hawaii must follow stricter ethics rules and can’t secretly record even if it’s legally permitted.
One-party consent rule for conversations
Hawaii lets you record any conversation you’re part of without telling the other person. The law says it’s not illegal to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication if you’re a party to it or have one party’s consent, provided the utterance qualifies as an "oral communication" under Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-41. That statute defines an "oral communication" as any utterance by a person exhibiting an expectation that the utterance is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation. If the utterance is shouted in public with no expectation of confidentiality, it falls outside the statutory definition of "oral communication" altogether, so the wiretap statute’s consent requirement never triggers at all. This one-party consent rule is codified at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-42(b)(3)(A), which applies uniformly to in-person, phone, and electronic/digital communications alike, and makes no distinction for telephone calls specifically. The only exception is if you’re recording to commit a crime or a tort. The law also protects recordings made by someone acting under color of law, like a police officer, under § 803-42(b)(4). Hawaii’s appellate courts have recognized this framework in case notes to § 803-42, citing 66 Haw. 653, 675 P.2d 754 (1983) and 67 Haw. 197, 682 P.2d 79 (1984), though full opinion text was not independently retrieved.
Recording in public places
You can usually record in public places like streets, parks, or stores where the public has access, but the analysis is not purely location-based. Hawaii’s definition of a “private place” excludes spots open to the public, so the stricter recording rules in Haw. Rev. Stat. § 711-1111 don’t apply there. However, the wiretap statute’s one-party consent rule itself is gated by an exhibited-expectation-of-privacy test at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-41: the speaker must have exhibited an expectation that the utterance was not subject to interception, and the surrounding circumstances must objectively justify that expectation. If someone shouts in a crowd or speaks loudly enough that others can hear, they may not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so recording wouldn’t need consent. The safest public recordings are clear, audible conversations without lowered voices or privacy-seeking behavior. If someone’s conduct suggests they expect privacy—like stepping aside or lowering their voice—the law isn’t as clear, so treat those situations carefully. Because no reported Hawaii appellate decision squarely defines a broader reasonable-expectation-of-privacy recording test outside these statutes, courts rely on the statutory text itself. Treat capture in a public space as permitted only if the record affirmatively establishes each of the following. If evidence on any element is absent, ambiguous, or cannot be confirmed, treat that element as unsatisfied and hold at Tier 2.
(1) Volume/audibility: the conversation is at a normal or raised speaking volume, clearly audible to an ordinary passerby without special effort (no cupped ear, no closing distance beyond normal passing range).
(2) No privacy-seeking conduct: no party engages in observable privacy-seeking behavior, including huddling, cupping hands near the mouth, stepping or turning away from bystanders or open sightlines, moving toward a corner or barrier, or lowering their voice relative to how they had been speaking.
(3) Location genuinely open, both categorically and in fact: (a) the location is of a type genuinely open to casual public passage or observation (sidewalk, open plaza, park, retail floor) and is not an enclosed sub-space of the kind Haw. Rev. Stat. §§ 711-1100/711-1111 treat as a place where a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches (restroom, fitting room, locker room, parked car, or similar enclosed sub-space within a public venue); and (b) the location was not, at the time of the conversation, effectively deserted or isolated from other people such that a passerby's presence was merely theoretical rather than actual.
(4) No expressed desire for privacy: no party audibly states, gestures toward, or otherwise signals — to each other, to a third party, or to whoever is recording — a desire for privacy or confidentiality (e.g., "can we talk somewhere private," asking someone to lower their voice, waving off a recording device).
Capture may proceed under the public-space default only if all four elements are affirmatively satisfied on the observable record. If any element fails, is contested, or cannot be confirmed, hold capture at Tier 2 pending review under the Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-41 exhibited-expectation/justifying-circumstances test rather than proceeding on the public-space default.
Recording in private places
Recording inside a private place—like a home, bathroom, or fitting room—is restricted. Hawaii defines a “private place” at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 711-1100 as somewhere you reasonably expect to be safe from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance, but it doesn’t include places open to the public. If you record sounds or events in a private place without consent, you could face penalties under § 711-1111. The law doesn’t give special treatment to your own home; it’s the location’s privacy level that matters, and confidence on this sub-point is medium-low because no Hawaii case law carves out a home-specific exception. If you’re part of the conversation, the one-party consent rule at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-42(b)(3)(A) still applies, but if others in the room aren’t part of the talk, the private-place rule could apply to them. Treat capture in a private space as permitted only for the portion of audio in which the wearer is an actual, active party to the conversation (i.e., is being spoken to or is speaking as part of the exchange). If the transcript indicates a distinct conversation between two or more other people that the wearer is not participating in — even if occurring in the wearer’s own home — hold that portion at Tier 2 rather than extending the wearer’s one-party consent to it.
Recording on-duty police in public
Hawaii law and federal precedent protect your right to record on-duty police officers performing their duties in public. State statute § 711-1111(1)(d) says it doesn’t prohibit recording a law enforcement officer in a public place or under circumstances where the officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy. The Hawai‘i Supreme Court has also ruled that filming government officials, including police, is protected by the First Amendment and article I, section 4 of the Hawai‘i Constitution, as long as you don’t interfere with their duties, in State v. Russo, 138 Hawai‘i 401, 407 P.3d 137 (Haw. 2017). This is a more directly on-point and more authoritative precedent than the Ninth Circuit’s Askins v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035 (9th Cir. 2018), which reinforces the same protection. The wiretap statute’s one-party consent rule at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-42(b)(3)(A) also covers this situation, since you’re part of the interaction.
Silent video recording
Recording silent video without sound is generally allowed in public places, but the rules change in private places. The wiretap statute at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-42 only covers communications with an expectation of non-interception, so silent video isn’t covered by that law. But a separate privacy law, § 711-1111, bans using a device to record events in a private place without consent. So if you’re silently recording video in your own home or another private space, you could face penalties if others in that space expect privacy. In public, silent video is usually fine unless it’s used to intrude on someone’s privacy in another way. Hawaii’s definition of "private place" at § 711-1100 excludes places open to the public, while "public place" includes streets, parks, and businesses. Because § 711-1111’s restrictions apply only to conduct in or originating from a private place, recording disputes or interactions occurring in public places falls outside that statute’s prohibition.
Penalties and legal risks
Breaking Hawaii’s recording laws can lead to criminal charges and civil lawsuits. Violating the wiretap statute (§ 803-42) is a Class C felony. Breaking the privacy law (§ 711-1111) is a misdemeanor. You could also face a civil lawsuit under § 803-48, which lets people sue for actual damages, profits, or statutory damages (the greater of $100 per day or $10,000), plus attorney fees; a good-faith reliance on a court order defense is available under the same section. Lawyers in Hawaii face extra ethics rules—they can’t secretly record conversations even if it’s legally allowed under state law, unless there’s a rare exception approved by a court or statute, as set out in Hawai‘i Formal Ethics Opinion No. 30 (1988). The Disciplinary Board of the Hawai‘i Supreme Court and the Office of Disciplinary Counsel are two distinct, currently coexisting bodies within the same attorney-discipline system; neither replaced the other, and both are still active today.
The full picture
Every layer of the law, not just the headline rule
Statute · Penalty: mixed
Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-42 (Part IV, Electronic Eavesdropping) — "Interception, access, and disclosure of wire, oral, or electronic communications... prohibited," with the one-party consent exception at § 803-42(b)(3)(A); civil remedy at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-48. A separate, narrower privacy-tort/criminal statute, Haw. Rev. Stat. § 711-1111 (Violation of privacy in the second degree), governs recording of sounds/events in a "private place" (defined in § 711-1100) and contains the explicit statutory carve-out for recording on-duty police in public.
In-person vs. phone & video calls
No differential treatment. HRS § 803-42(b)(3)(A) applies uniformly to "wire, oral, or electronic communication" and makes one-party consent (including the recorder being a party to the conversation) a complete defense for in-person, phone, and electronic/digital communications alike, "unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act." The person-acting-under-color-of-law provision, § 803-42(b)(4), is likewise one-party consent. There is no separate all-party rule carved out for telephone calls specifically.
Recording in public
HRS § 711-1100 expressly defines "private place" to EXCLUDE "a place to which the public or a substantial group thereof has access," and separately defines "public place" as one "to which the public or a substantial group of persons has access," including streets, transportation facilities, parks, businesses, etc. Because § 711-1111's recording restrictions (subsections (1)(d) and (1)(e)) apply only to conduct in/originating from a "private place," recording disputes or interactions occurring in public places falls outside that statute's prohibition. The core wiretap statute, § 803-42, is independently satisfied by one-party consent regardless of location, so a person who is a participant/party to a public dispute may record it under § 803-42(b)(3)(A) as well. No reported Hawaii appellate decision squarely defining a broader "reasonable expectation of privacy" recording test outside these statutes was located, so this answer relies on the statutory text itself. A second, independent gate sits upstream of this one and governs the core wiretap statute itself: HRS § 803-41 defines "oral communication" — the term operative in § 803-42(b)(3)(A)'s one-party-consent rule — as an utterance made "exhibiting an expectation that the utterance is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation," a codified reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test in its own right, textually distinct from and prior to the § 711-1100/§ 711-1111 "private place" analysis above. If an utterance doesn't clear THIS gate (e.g., shouted in public with no expectation of confidentiality), § 803-42's one-party-consent requirement never triggers at all, independent of whether the location itself is a "private place" under § 711-1100. (Official case notes to § 803-42 cite two cases construing related points — 66 Haw. 653, 675 P.2d 754 (1983) and 67 Haw. 197, 682 P.2d 79 (1984) — citations confirmed to exist in the official annotation; full opinion text/party names not independently retrieved.)
Recording at home
No statutory language in § 803-42 or § 711-1111 gives a person's own home special/different treatment from other locations — the operative statutory category is "private place" (defined in § 711-1100), not "one's own home" specifically. A home would typically qualify as a "private place," meaning HRS § 711-1111(1)(d) would bar a person from installing/using a recording device "in any private place, without consent of the person or persons entitled to privacy therein." For the described use case, if an incident occurs inside the recorder's own home and the recorder is a participant, one-party consent under § 803-42(b)(3)(A) should still cover any oral communication; the § 711-1111 private-place restriction is aimed more at covert surveillance installed without the consent of an occupant of that private place, not at a participant openly recording their own encounter. No Hawaii case law was located specifically carving out "own home" as an independent exception distinct from the general "private place" framework, so confidence on this particular sub-point is medium-low.
Recording the police
Hawaii has an express statutory carve-out protecting the right to record on-duty police in public. HRS § 711-1111(1)(d) provides that its private-place recording prohibition "shall not prohibit a person from making a video or audio recording or taking a photograph of a law enforcement officer while the officer is in the performance of the officer's duties in a public place or under circumstances in which the officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy and the person is not interfering with the officer's ability to maintain safety and control, secure crime scenes and accident sites, protect the integrity and confidentiality of investigations, and protect the public safety and order." Separately, HRS § 803-42(b)(3)(A) allows any person (party or one-party-consented) to record a communication they are part of, and § 803-42(b)(4) gives the same one-party consent latitude to a person acting under color of law — so a civilian recording their own encounter with police satisfies the wiretap statute's one-party consent exception regardless of the § 711-1111 carve-out. Hawaii sits within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the NINTH CIRCUIT, which has recognized a First Amendment right to record matters of public interest, including police performing official duties in public places — see Askins v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035 (9th Cir. 2018) (reversing dismissal and holding the First Amendment protects photographing/recording of law enforcement activity in public places; the case later settled in 2020 with a consent agreement). This circuit-level precedent, combined with Hawaii's own statutory carve-out, gives strong protection to recording on-duty police in public within Hawaii.
Video-only capture (no audio)
HRS § 803-42 (the wiretap statute) applies only to "wire, oral, or electronic communication" — "oral communication" (defined in § 803-41) requires an uttered communication with an expectation of non-interception; it does not reach silent, soundless video/image capture. However, a separate statute, HRS § 711-1111(1)(d) (Violation of privacy in the second degree), independently criminalizes installing or using "any means or device for observing, recording, amplifying, or broadcasting sounds or events" in a "private place" without consent of the person entitled to privacy there — this language ("events," not just sounds) does reach silent video/image recording, but ONLY inside a statutorily defined "private place" (HRS § 711-1100: "a place where one may reasonably expect to be safe from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance, but does not include a place to which the public or a substantial group thereof has access"). Silent video recording in a public place, or of a public-facing dispute/interaction/on-duty police encounter, is not restricted by either statute.
What counts as a “private” conversation →
Hawaii has two textually distinct, independently-operating consent/privacy gates. (1) The gate for the one-party-consent wiretap statute, HRS § 803-42(b)(3)(A), lives in the definition of "oral communication" at HRS § 803-41 — independently confirmed verbatim by direct fetch of the archived official statute page (capitol.hawaii.gov blocks live requests with Cloudflare; verified via the cached Wayback Machine capture instead): "'Oral communication' means any utterance by a person exhibiting an expectation that the utterance is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation, but the term does not include any electronic communication." This is a codified reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test (subjective exhibited-expectation prong + objective justifying-circumstances prong), structurally near-identical to the federal Wiretap Act's definition at 18 U.S.C. § 2510(2). It gates § 803-42(b)(3)(A), independently confirmed verbatim from the same statute page: "It shall not be unlawful under this part for a person not acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication when the person is a party to the communication or when one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of this State." (2) A second, independent, place-based gate governs the separate misdemeanor privacy-tort statute, HRS § 711-1111 ("Violation of privacy in the second degree"), which restricts recording only in a "private place" as defined at HRS § 711-1100 — independently confirmed verbatim: "'Private place' means a place where one may reasonably expect to be safe from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance, but does not include a place to which the public or a substantial group thereof has access." These two gates sit in different statutes and need not be read together. The official annotated case notes to § 803-42 (independently confirmed present, word-for-word, on the same archived statute page) include: "Does not permit bugging of a private place unless the parties entitled to privacy consent. 66 H. 653, 675 P.2d 754 (1983)" and "Allows interception of wire or oral communication if one party to the conversation consents to the interception. 67 H. 197, 682 P.2d 79 (1984)." (Note: the official page cites Hawaii Reports as "H."; the researcher's "66 Haw." / "67 Haw." rendering is the same case under standard national Bluebook-style abbreviation — a citation-format variant, not an error.) Both citations are confirmed to exist verbatim in the official annotation; the full opinions/party names could not be independently retrieved in this session (CourtListener returned 403; WebSearch budget for this session was already exhausted) — this should remain flagged as "citation confirmed to exist in the official annotation, but not verified against full opinion text," exactly as the original researcher stated. The 66 H. 653 case note interacts with § 803-42(b)(3)(B) (a narrower, color-of-law/government-actor covert-installation provision, distinct from the (b)(3)(A) one-party-consent provision that governs an ordinary private citizen's own recording) — this is a secondary edge case not central to live.law's private-citizen-wearer use case, and does not affect the one-party-consent conclusion for ordinary users. Confirmed accurate. A recorded utterance must first qualify as an "oral communication" under HRS § 803-41 — the speaker must have exhibited an expectation that the utterance was not subject to interception, and the surrounding circumstances must objectively justify that expectation. If it clears this gate, HRS § 803-42(b)(3)(A) requires only one participating party's consent (Hawaii is a one-party-consent state). If it does NOT clear the gate — e.g., shouted loudly on a public street, or made under circumstances with no reasonable expectation of non-interception — it falls outside the statutory definition of "oral communication" altogether, so the wiretap statute's consent requirement never triggers and no one's consent is needed to record it under § 803-42. The separate, place-based § 711-1111 "private place" restriction (defined at § 711-1100) could still independently apply if the physical location itself qualifies as a "private place" — a distinct analytical track keyed to location, not to the speaker's expectation about that specific utterance. This reasoning is internally consistent with the confirmed statutory text and with Hawaii's correctly-classified one_party consent_type.
None enacted. Hawaii has no dedicated biometric privacy statute (no BIPA/CUBI/WA-style law) and no comprehensive consumer privacy law with a biometric-data provision currently in force. The only enacted, relevant statute is HRS Chapter 487N (Security Breach of Personal Information), whose definition of "personal information" (independently verified by direct reading of the official statute text) covers only SSN, driver's license/state-ID number, and financial-account/access-credential numbers -- it does not reach biometric data or voiceprints. A dedicated BIPA-style bill, 2023 S.B. 1085 ("Hawaii Biometric Information Privacy Act"), was introduced, deferred in the Senate LBT committee on 2/10/2023, and carried over to the 2024 session, where the official Hawaii Legislature bill-status page shows no further action was ever taken -- it lapsed at the end of the 2023-2024 biennium without a floor vote or enactment. A separate 2026 bill (SB3016, per the researcher's account) that would have added biometric data to the Ch. 487N breach-notification definition reportedly also died; I was unable to independently verify this specific 2026 bill (capitol.hawaii.gov blocks automated fetches and no archived snapshot exists yet), so that portion rests on the original researcher's sourcing only. Comprehensive consumer-privacy bills (e.g., SB1037, SB1163) that would have treated biometric data as "sensitive data" have likewise not been enacted, per the original researcher's account (not independently re-verified by me due to search-budget exhaustion). — None currently required by Hawaii statute before collecting or processing a voiceprint. HRS Ch. 487N does not regulate collection/processing of biometric identifiers at all (confirmed by direct reading of the current definitions section) -- it only imposes post-breach notification duties for a narrower, non-biometric "personal information" definition. It imposes no pre-collection consent, notice, or retention/destruction-policy requirement applicable to live.law's voice-enrollment feature. The failed 2023/2024 SB1085 would have required written notice, a written release (consent) before collection, a 3-year-or-purpose-based retention/destruction schedule, and would have prohibited sale/profit from biometric data -- confirmed by direct reading of the bill text -- but it lapsed without enactment. Bottom line for live.law: no Hawaii-specific statutory gate exists for voiceprint collection today. This is a live legislative area (a BIPA-style bill was reintroduced across 2023-2024, and per the researcher's account a biometric breach-notification expansion was introduced again in 2026), so this should be flagged for periodic re-check each legislative session (typically convenes January, adjourns ~May) rather than treated as permanently settled.
Attorney ethics (ABA Formal Op. 01-422) →
Hawaii's only direct authority found on this point is Hawai'i Formal Ethics Opinion No. 30 (1988), issued by the Disciplinary Board of the Hawai'i Supreme Court. It squarely takes the position ABA Formal Opinion 01-422 (2001) later abandoned: undisclosed recording by a lawyer of a conversation with another person, without that person's knowledge and consent, is presumptively improper as a matter of legal ethics — independent of whether it is criminally/civilly legal. Verbatim (independently confirmed from two separate secondary sources reproducing the opinion's text — see Sources): "Inquiry has been made concerning the ethical propriety of the electronic recording by a lawyer of a conversation between the lawyer and another person without that person's prior knowledge and consent... [E]ven if such conduct is not illegal, it offends the traditional high standard of fairness and candor which should characterize the practice of law and must be deemed improper, except in the special situations mentioned below... Therefore no lawyer should record or cause to be recorded any conversation, whether by taps or other electronic device, without the consent or prior knowledge of all parties to the conversation." The opinion carves out a narrow, undefined exception: "There may be extraordinary circumstances in which secret recordings of conversations by lawyers are rendered permissible, such as where, for example, sanctioned by express statutory or judicial authority," leaving those to be "considered on its own merits" case by case. This tracks the older ABA Formal Opinion 337 (1974) per-se-improper framework that 01-422 withdrew nationally — Hawaii's opinion predates 01-422 by thirteen years and expressly conditions the ethics violation on the conduct occurring "even if such conduct is not illegal," treating it as an ethics violation independent of the state's own wiretap/consent statute (HRS 803-42). CORRECTION FROM ORIGINAL DRAFT: the original write-up described the Disciplinary Board as a "predecessor body" to today's Office of Disciplinary Counsel. That is incorrect. I confirmed directly on dbhawaii.org's homepage that the Disciplinary Board and ODC are two distinct, currently-coexisting entities within the same attorney-discipline system (ODC investigates and prosecutes; the Board reviews and refers serious matters to the Hawai'i Supreme Court for final action). Neither replaced the other, and both are still active today. CURRENCY CAVEAT (strengthened, not resolved, by my check): I independently OCR'd the 1998 CRS report (98-250) myself and confirmed the quoted text is accurate. I also located a second, later CRS report — R42650 (Aug. 9, 2012) — that the original researcher did not find. It reproduces the identical opinion text and adds its own parenthetical: "(this opinion is no longer listed among those currently in effect by the Disciplinary Board of the Hawai'i Supreme Court)." That is the same conclusion the original researcher reached independently from today's (2026) dbhawaii.org listing, which runs from Opinion No. 18 through No. 50 and explicitly marks a few numbers in that range (35, 39, 49) "Deleted/Superseded" with dates — but has no entry, and no deletion marking, for No. 30 at all. So across two independent snapshots 14 years apart (2012 and 2026), Opinion No. 30 has consistently been absent from the "currently in effect" list, without ever having been marked as formally withdrawn the way other lapsed opinions are. That is a materially stronger signal than the original single soft observation, but it still does not resolve whether the opinion (a) was substantively withdrawn/superseded without a documented notation, or (b) simply predates the current online numbering/archival system (which itself starts at 18) and was never migrated regardless of status. I found no case, rule amendment, or later formal/informal opinion that revisits, reaffirms, or withdraws Opinion No. 30 in light of ABA 01-422 (2001) or the 2014-revised Hawai'i Rules of Professional Conduct (I confirmed by direct text-extraction of the current HRPC PDF that no rule addresses undisclosed recording directly — this remains purely an ethics-opinion-level question). Given that unresolved ambiguity about current force — though not about what the opinion itself says, which is now doubly corroborated — confidence remains medium rather than high.
Can you personally sue over a violation?
Yes — this state gives a private right of action, not just criminal/regulatory enforcement.
Sources
- https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/vol14_ch0701-0853/hrs0803/hrs_0803-0042.htm (primary, current HRS 803-42 text; direct fetch blocked by Cloudflare so verified via Wayback Machine snapshot: http://web.archive.org/web/20231207125745/https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0803/HRS_0803-0042.htm)
- https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0803/HRS_0803-0048.htm (primary, HRS 803-48 civil damages provision; verified via Wayback Machine snapshot http://web.archive.org/web/20250430160659/https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0803/HRS_0803-0048.htm)
- https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0711/HRS_0711-1111.htm (primary, HRS 711-1111 violation of privacy in the second degree, including the on-duty-police recording carve-out; verified via Wayback Machine snapshot http://web.archive.org/web/20250622063423/https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0711/HRS_0711-1111.htm)
- https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0711/HRS_0711-1100.htm (primary, HRS 711-1100 definitions including 'private place' and 'public place'; verified via Wayback Machine snapshot http://web.archive.org/web/20250211214839/https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol14_Ch0701-0853/HRS0711/HRS_0711-1100.htm)
- Askins v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035 (9th Cir. 2018) — Ninth Circuit opinion (controlling case law in the circuit that includes Hawaii) recognizing a First Amendment right to record police in public places; opinion at https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/08/14/16-55719.pdf
- https://law.justia.com/codes/hawaii/title-38/chapter-803/section-803-42/ (secondary aggregator, used only as a lead to locate the primary capitol.hawaii.gov statute text)
- https://law.justia.com/codes/hawaii/title-38/chapter-803/section-803-48/ (secondary aggregator, used only as a lead to locate the primary capitol.hawaii.gov statute text)
Common situations
Specific questions people actually ask
Can I record as a guest in someone else's home?
It depends on the specifics of the moment — Hawaii doesn't give a guest the same clear leeway a homeowner gets, so this is closer to a case-by-case call than a fixed yes or no.
Read the full explainer →What if I'm on a call with someone in another state?
Which state's rule actually governs an interstate call touching Hawaii isn't clearly settled. The safest approach is still to follow whichever state — yours or theirs — requires more from you.
This is a newer, less-settled corner of the law — our own research is still being refined here, so treat this as a starting point, not a final answer.
Read the full explainer →If it's legal to record, can it still be used against me later?
Usually, yes. Being legal to record and being protected from a future court case are two different questions — a legal recording can generally still be obtained by the other side later. That's especially true the moment a third person is present or on the line — even one extra listener can be enough to strip away legal protection here. Recording your own conversation with your own attorney is a separate, more protected situation, but almost everything else — a landlord, a police officer, a family member — isn't automatically off-limits to opposing counsel just because it was legal to capture.
This is a newer, less-settled corner of the law — our own research is still being refined here, so treat this as a starting point, not a final answer.
Read the full explainer →Frequently asked questions
Can I record a conversation in my own home without telling the other person?
You can record conversations you’re part of, but if others in your home expect privacy, recording could violate Hawaii’s privacy law. The law doesn’t treat your home as a special exception—it depends on whether the location is a “private place” and whether others expect privacy there.
Is it legal to record a police officer during a traffic stop?
Yes. Hawaii law and court rulings protect recording on-duty police officers performing their duties in public, as long as you don’t interfere with their work. The First Amendment and state statute both support this right, including the Hawai‘i Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Russo, 138 Hawai‘i 401, 407 P.3d 137 (Haw. 2017), which held that filming government officials, including police, is constitutionally protected.
What happens if I record someone without consent in a private place?
You could face a misdemeanor charge under § 711-1111 and a civil lawsuit under § 803-48. The law treats this as a serious privacy violation, even if you’re part of the conversation.
Can I record a loud argument in a public park?
Likely yes, if the conversation is at a normal volume and there’s no indication anyone expects privacy. But if someone lowers their voice or steps aside, the situation is less clear—treat it cautiously. An utterance must first meet the statutory expectation-of-privacy test in Haw. Rev. Stat. § 803-41; if it doesn’t, the wiretap statute’s consent requirement never applies.
Are there special rules for lawyers recording conversations?
Yes. Even if recording is legal under Hawaii’s laws, lawyers face ethics rules that prohibit undisclosed recording unless there’s a rare exception approved by a court or statute. This is separate from criminal or civil penalties and is set out in Hawai‘i Formal Ethics Opinion No. 30 (1988).
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