Illinois's wiretapping law (720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5 / Criminal Code of 2012. Article 14, also called the Illinois eavesdropping law) was a "two-party consent" law. Illinois made it a crime to use an "eavesdropping device" to overhear or record a phone call or conversation without the consent of all parties to the conversation. The law was ruled unconstitutional in 2014 by the Illinois Supreme Court. The law defined an "eavesdropping device" as "any device capable of being used to hear or record oral conversation or intercept, retain, or transcribe electronic communication whether such conversation or electronic communication is conducted in person, by telephone, or by any other means". The law had been repeatedly and controversially used to arrest people who have video-taped police.
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History
In August 2010, Tiawanda Moore had criminal wiretapping charges brought against her for secretly recording police officers with her BlackBerry when she was filing a complaint for sexual harassment. In August 2011, a jury cleared her of the charges brought against her, and in 2012 Moore filed a federal suit against the city, alleging "unreasonable seizure, false arrest and malicious prosecution".
Court proceedings
In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit ACLU v. Alvarez against the State's Attorney of Cook County, Anita Alvarez, to block prosecution of ACLU staff for recording police officers performing their duties in public places, one of the group's long-standing monitoring missions. On 2 March 2012, Criminal Courts Judge Stanley Sacks deemed the Illinois wiretapping law unconstitutional, potentially criminalizing "wholly innocent conduct". In November 2012, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of this ruling.
Alvarez and other state's attorneys, however, continued to pursue prosecutions against members of the general public who openly recorded on-duty police officers in public places. As a result, on April 8, 2013, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve signed an order permanently enjoining Alvarez from enforcing the wiretapping law against any person who openly records the audible communications of police.
On March 20, 2014, the Illinois Supreme Court declared the Illinois wiretapping law unconstitutional unanimously in People v. Melongo and People v. Clark.
Revised law
Following the Melongo and Clark decisions, the state legislature drafted a bill amending the wiretapping statute to make it constitutionally compliant. The bill was injected into an unrelated piece of legislation, and was passed as SB1342 late in the legislative session. On December 30, 2014, Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill into law as Public Act 098-1142.
SB1342 makes changes to the original language of the wiretapping law, adding that in order to commit a criminal offense, a person must be recording "in a surreptitious manner". The bill's sponsors, Elaine Nekritz and Kwame Raoul, claim the law upholds the rights of citizens to record in public.