Is It Legal to Record a Conversation in Illinois?

Statute · Penalty: felony

720 ILCS 5/14-1 through 5/14-6 (Illinois Criminal Code of 1961, Article 14 "Eavesdropping"), as amended by P.A. 98-1142 (eff. Dec. 30, 2014) and P.A. 99-352 (eff. Jan. 1, 2016); note 720 ILCS 5/14-3 was most recently amended by P.A. 104-245 (eff. 1-1-26), and 5/14-6 is sourced to P.A. 98-268 (eff. 1-1-14, adding the police-recording carve-out at 5/14-2(e)). Core offense: 720 ILCS 5/14-2; definitions (incl. the "surreptitious manner" element): 5/14-1; exemptions: 5/14-3; penalties: 5/14-4; civil remedy: 5/14-6.

In-person vs. phone & video calls

The statute does not distinguish in-person oral conversations from phone/electronic communications for consent purposes — both are all-party consent, gated on the same "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard. 720 ILCS 5/14-1 defines "private conversation" (in-person oral communication) and "private electronic communication" (phone/electronic) in parallel terms: both require that at least one party intended the communication to be private "under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation." 720 ILCS 5/14-2(a) criminalizes eavesdropping on either category without consent of all parties in essentially the same manner, so the one-party/all-party rule is identical across in-person and electronic communications — the only variable is whether the specific conversation carries a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Recording in public

Illinois's public/private threshold operates through two independent gates, not one. First, the definitional gate: 720 ILCS 5/14-1(d) ("private conversation") and 5/14-1(e) ("private electronic communication") require that a party intended the communication to be private "under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation" — codified in P.A. 98-1142 (eff. 12/30/14) after the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the prior gateless version as unconstitutionally overbroad in People v. Clark, 2014 IL 115776, and its companion case People v. Melongo, 2014 IL 114852 (both 3/20/2014). The Court's own examples of what the old law wrongly swept in: "a loud argument on the street," "a political debate in a park," and "the public interactions of police officers with citizens" — none of which "implicate privacy interests" (Clark ¶21). Second, and independent of the first: the core offense (720 ILCS 5/14-2(a)(1)-(3)) only reaches conduct done "in a surreptitious manner," defined at 14-1(g) as "obtained or made by stealth or deception, or executed through secrecy or concealment" — so even a conversation that IS private can fall outside the offense if the recording is done openly/visibly. Third — correcting an outright error carried in an earlier pass of this dataset: there IS an explicit, numbered statutory carve-out for recording on-duty police, 720 ILCS 5/14-2(e) (added by P.A. 99-352, eff. 1/1/16) — "Nothing in this Article shall prohibit any individual, not a law enforcement officer, from recording a law enforcement officer in the performance of his or her duties in a public place or in circumstances in which the officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy..." This is a real numbered subsection, not merely a case-law inference from Clark/Melongo/Alvarez as earlier stated. High confidence — all four elements (14-1(d), 14-1(e), 14-1(g), 14-2(e)) independently confirmed verbatim against ilga.gov's raw statute text.

Recording at home

No distinct, stricter (or looser) statutory rule specific to recording inside one's own home was found in Article 14. The same "private conversation"/"reasonable expectation of privacy" standard in 720 ILCS 5/14-1 and the same all-party-consent offense in 5/14-2 apply regardless of location; a home simply tends, as a factual matter, to be a setting where a reasonable expectation of privacy is more easily established (making all-party consent more likely required there than in a public street), but this is a general application of the same statutory test, not a home-specific carve-out or enhanced penalty provision. Confidence: medium — I did not find a home-specific subsection in 14-1 through 14-6, nor did I locate controlling case law establishing a home-specific rule distinct from the general reasonable-expectation-of-privacy analysis; this is a negative finding (absence of a special rule) rather than one I could exhaustively confirm against every reported Illinois decision.

Recording the police

Illinois has an explicit, numbered statutory carve-out for recording on-duty police — 720 ILCS 5/14-2(e) (added by P.A. 99-352, eff. 1/1/16): "Nothing in this Article shall prohibit any individual, not a law enforcement officer, from recording a law enforcement officer in the performance of his or her duties in a public place or in circumstances in which the officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy. However, an officer may take reasonable action 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." (An earlier pass of this dataset stated there was no such explicit subsection and attributed the protection to case law alone — that was incorrect; 14-2(e) is a real, independently-confirmed numbered statutory provision.) This sits alongside, and is reinforced by, the case-law protection: the post-2014 "private conversation" definition already excludes on-duty police's public interactions with citizens from all-party-consent coverage (Clark/Melongo reasoning), and ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012), separately held the First Amendment protects openly recording on-duty police in public — controlling precedent in Illinois's Seventh Circuit. Caution/counterweight, unaffected by this correction: 720 ILCS 5/14-4(b) imposes an enhanced penalty (Class 3/Class 2 felony vs. base Class 4/Class 3) for unauthorized eavesdropping of a law enforcement officer, State's Attorney, or judge performing official duties — understood to target surreptitious recording of a genuinely private communication involving such officials, not open recording of a public police-citizen encounter, though no controlling post-2014 case squarely tests that exact boundary (medium confidence on this narrower point).

Video-only capture (no audio)

Not restricted by the eavesdropping statute. 720 ILCS 5/14-1(a) defines "eavesdropping device" as a device used "to hear or record oral conversation or intercept, transmit, or transcribe electronic communications," and 5/14-2 criminalizes recording/overhearing "conversations" or "electronic communications" — both audio-centric concepts. Silent video with no audio track does not capture a "conversation" and multiple secondary legal sources (Illinois State Bar Association commentary, practitioner guides) confirm video-only recording (e.g., dashcams, security cameras without microphones, or a wearable capturing silent video) falls outside Article 14's scope. Confidence on this specific sub-point is medium-high: it is well-supported by the statutory text's audio/communication-centric definitions and consistent secondary commentary, but I did not locate a controlling Illinois appellate/supreme court holding squarely stating "silent video is categorically exempt," so it is an inference from the plain statutory language rather than a directly on-point case holding. Note: a separate, distinct statute — the unauthorized video recording/"video voyeurism" provision, 720 ILCS 5/26-4 — separately restricts covert video recording of a person in a restroom, tanning booth, locker room, changing room, or "under or through the clothing" without consent, regardless of audio. That provision is not implicated by recording a dispute, a police interaction, or other public/semi-public incidents, but should be flagged as a separate video-specific statute distinct from the eavesdropping article.

What counts as a “private” conversation →

Illinois uses a hybrid subjective-intent + objective-reasonableness ("reasonable expectation of privacy") test, codified in parallel definitions at 720 ILCS 5/14-1(d) ("private conversation") and 5/14-1(e) ("private electronic communication"). Confirmed verbatim via direct fetch of ilga.gov raw statute text: 14-1(d) defines "private conversation" as one where "one or more of the parties intended the communication to be of a private nature under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation"; 14-1(e) defines "private electronic communication" in parallel terms as one where "the sending or receiving party intends the electronic communication to be private under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation" (note: these are two distinct clauses, not one uniform quote — 14-1(d) uses "of a private nature," 14-1(e) uses "to be private"). This is not a bright-line "no third parties present" rule, nor a gateless statute — it replaced a 1994-2014 gateless version (which the Illinois Supreme Court, in People v. Clark, 2014 IL 115776 (Ill., filed 3/20/2014, docket confirmed), described as making the statute "essentially deem[] all conversations to be private... even if the participants themselves have no expectation of privacy") that was struck down as unconstitutionally overbroad in Clark and its same-day companion case People v. Melongo, 2014 IL 114852 (Ill., filed 3/20/2014 — both dates independently confirmed by pulling and OCR'ing the actual opinion PDFs, not just metadata). The Court's overbreadth rationale, independently confirmed verbatim at Clark ¶21: the pre-2014 version swept in recording "(1) a loud argument on the street; (2) a political debate in a park; (3) the public interactions of police officers with citizens (if done by a member of the general public); and (4) any other conversation loud enough to be overheard by others... None of these examples implicate privacy interests." The legislature restored the reasonable-expectation gate via P.A. 98-1142 (eff. 12/30/14) — confirmed as the "Source:" line on 14-1. A second, independent threshold sits alongside it: the core offense (720 ILCS 5/14-2(a)(1)-(3)) only reaches conduct done "in a surreptitious manner" — confirmed verbatim in the raw statute text for all three subsections — defined at 14-1(g) as "obtained or made by stealth or deception, or executed through secrecy or concealment" (also confirmed verbatim). So open/visible recording of even a genuinely private conversation arguably falls outside the core offense on its face. There is also an explicit, numbered statutory carve-out for recording on-duty police: 720 ILCS 5/14-2(e) (added by P.A. 99-352, eff. 1/1/16 — confirmed as part of 14-2's "Source:" line, "P.A. 98-1142, eff. 12-30-14; 99-352, eff. 1-1-16") — independently confirmed character-for-character via raw ilga.gov fetch: "Nothing in this Article shall prohibit any individual, not a law enforcement officer, from recording a law enforcement officer in the performance of his or her duties in a public place or in circumstances in which the officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy. However, an officer may take reasonable action 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." A communication must first qualify as a "private conversation" or "private electronic communication" under 720 ILCS 5/14-1(d)/(e) — i.e., a party intended it to be private (or "of a private nature") "under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation" — and the recording must be done "in a surreptitious manner" (720 ILCS 5/14-2(a)(1)-(3), defined at 14-1(g)) before Illinois's all-party-consent rule applies at all. If a communication doesn't clear the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy threshold (e.g., a loud street argument, a park political debate, an on-duty officer's public interactions with a citizen — the Illinois Supreme Court's own examples in Clark ¶21) — or if the recording is done openly rather than surreptitiously — the all-party-consent offense does not reach it, and no one's consent is legally required under Article 14. Only once a communication clears both gates does Illinois's all-party (not one-party) consent requirement govern, consistent with the row's top-level consent_type of "all_party." This is logically sound: I independently confirmed all four statutory elements it depends on (14-1(d), 14-1(e), 14-1(g), 14-2(a)(1)-(3)) directly against ilga.gov's raw statute text.

Biometric / voiceprint law · Private right of action →

Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) — Confirmed directly from official ilga.gov text: 740 ILCS 14/10 defines "biometric identifier" as "a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry" — voiceprint is expressly and unambiguously covered. Before collecting, capturing, purchasing, receiving through trade, or otherwise obtaining a person's voiceprint, 740 ILCS 14/15(b) requires a private entity to: (1) inform the subject in writing that a biometric identifier/information is being collected or stored; (2) inform the subject in writing of the specific purpose and length of term for which it is being collected, stored, and used; and (3) receive a written release from the subject or their legally authorized representative (an electronic signature now qualifies per the 2024 amendment). 15(a) requires a written, publicly available retention schedule and destruction guidelines, with destruction required when the initial purpose is satisfied or within 3 years of the individual's last interaction with the entity, whichever occurs first. 15(c) bars selling, leasing, trading, or otherwise profiting from the voiceprint. 15(d) restricts disclosure absent consent, a completed-financial-transaction exception, legal compulsion, or a valid warrant/subpoena. 15(e) requires a reasonable standard of care at least as protective as the entity's treatment of other confidential/sensitive information. Statutory exemptions at 740 ILCS 14/25 (e.g., GLBA-covered financial institutions, government contractors/agents) do not appear to apply to a private consumer-facing smartglasses company like live.law.

Attorney ethics (ABA Formal Op. 01-422) →

No Illinois State Bar Association ethics opinion, ARDC rule, or Illinois court decision was found that squarely holds a lawyer's undisclosed recording to be per se unethical (the old ABA Formal Op. 337 approach), that adopts ABA Formal Opinion 01-422's more permissive standard, or that stakes out an explicit case-by-case middle ground for lawyers specifically. Independent verification confirmed this is a genuine gap in Illinois authority rather than a search failure, based on four convergent lines of evidence: (1) The ISBA's subject index of its published ethics opinions (browsable across dozens of categories from "Advertising" to "Witnesses") has no category for recording, taping, surveillance, wiretapping, or eavesdropping; the two closest candidates on direct inspection - "Misrepresentation" (a single opinion, 95-10, on undisclosed document alteration - not recording) and "Confidentiality" (25 opinions on client-data handling - not recording) - do not address recording conversations. (2) Independently re-fetched and confirmed: the ISBA also maintains a separate index cross-referencing every opinion to the specific Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct it construes. Pulling the full Rule 8.4 (Misconduct) cross-reference list directly - roughly 55 opinions spanning 1985 to 2026 - turned up zero opinions addressing recording or surreptitious recording of conversations; the only opinion touching any form of covert monitoring is Opinion 18-01 (2018), on email tracking software, which is analytically distinct (electronic surveillance of written communications, not conversation recording) and does not purport to resolve the recording question. This rule-specific index is a stronger check than the subject-index alone and corroborates the same conclusion. (3) A 1998 Congressional Research Service report (Charles Doyle, "Wiretapping, Tape Recorders & Legal Ethics," CRS 98-251) that specifically canvasses state bar/court positions on precisely this question - sorting states into "per-se unethical" adopters of ABA 337 (Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia), states recognizing "expanded exceptions" (Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee), and states that "refused to adopt the ABA unethical per se approach" (D.C., Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin) - was independently downloaded and full-text-checked (not just its abstract): Illinois does not appear in any of the three named groups. Illinois appears in the report exactly once, in an unrelated footnote listing states whose wiretap statutes are stricter than federal law (a criminal-legality point, not a bar-ethics ruling). (4) Two law-review pieces specifically on this exact ethics question, both from Illinois-based journals (UIC Law Review, "Is It Ethical for Attorneys to Record Telephone Conversations?"; and 2003 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1605, Allison Vana, "Attorney Private Eyes: Ethical Implications of a Private Attorney's Decision to Surreptitiously Record Conversations"), each independently confirmed to exist and each surveying multiple other states' bar opinions (South Carolina, Colorado, Mississippi, Maine, Wisconsin, among others) on the topic, cite no ISBA opinion, ARDC rule, or Illinois case addressing it - a glaring omission for authors writing from within Illinois if such authority existed. Practical context (not itself the ethics answer, but relevant background): Illinois's eavesdropping statute (720 ILCS 5/14-2, as amended after the Illinois Supreme Court's decisions in People v. Melongo and People v. Clark, 2014, struck down the prior broad statute as unconstitutional) generally requires all-party consent to record a private conversation with a reasonable expectation of privacy, making unconsented recording a crime (Class 4 felony for a first offense) in most everyday scenarios. Because the underlying wiretap statute is itself an all-party-consent regime, the ABA 01-422 "is it independently unethical even when legal" question has comparatively little practical field of operation in Illinois for ordinary in-state calls/conversations - most undisclosed recording a lawyer might attempt in Illinois is already illegal and therefore a Rule 8.4(b) (criminal act) problem regardless of any 8.4(c) dishonesty analysis. Absent a located ISBA opinion or case, Illinois lawyers and commentators are left to reason from the general Rule 8.4(c) dishonesty/deceit standard and out-of-state persuasive authority (including ABA 01-422 itself) with no binding in-state gloss confirmed. Correction to the original researcher's notes: the ISBA Ethics Infoline number was misstated as 217-525-1760; the correct, verified number (per isba.org/ethics as of this check) is 217-747-1452.

Can you personally sue over a violation?

Yes — this state gives a private right of action, not just criminal/regulatory enforcement.

Can I record as a guest in someone else's home?

It depends on the specifics of the moment — Illinois 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.

What if I'm on a call with someone in another state?

Play it safe: if either state on the call requires everyone's okay to record, treat the whole call that way — don't assume Illinois's rule is the only one that matters just because you're the one wearing the glasses.

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. A third person being briefly or incidentally present doesn't automatically wreck that protection here, but it's still not something to count on. 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.