On 9 December 2014,
The Free Thought Project published an
article referencing the Illinois state legislature’s passage of an
amendment to Senate Bill 1342, which dealt with the recording of oral conversations between two or more persons
Although it was widely characterized as such, the legislation did not establish a new law specifically prohibiting citizens from recording police officers. Rather, the bill made it a felony to surreptitiously record any “private conversation” (defined as any “oral communication between 2 or more persons,” where at least one person involved had a “reasonable expectation” of privacy), with greater penalties for recording such conversations when they involved law enforcement officers (including not just police but also state attorneys and judges). The legislation was intended to replace a previous eavesdropping law that had been struck down by the state Supreme Court:
