Alabama Has No Right-to-Record Statute, but Its Eavesdropping Definitions Leave Public Filming Lawful

A full-text search of the Code of Alabama on the Legislature's own ALISON database returns two sections containing the phrase "law enforcement activity", § 31-13-21 on employing state officers through the Alabama Department of Homeland Security and § 15-27-4 on administrative filing fees for record expungement. Neither creates a right to record. Alabama has nothing resembling Nevada's NRS 171.1233 or California's Penal Code § 148(g), and no proviso protecting recording was written into its obstruction offense the way Oklahoma wrote one into 21 O.S. § 540.

What Alabama does have is Article 2 of Chapter 11 of Title 13A, enacted by Acts 1977, No. 607. Its definition section carries the whole answer. Eavesdropping under § 13A-11-30(1) means overhearing, recording, amplifying or transmitting part of "the private communication of others" without the consent of at least one of the persons engaged in it. Two limits follow from the wording. Because consent of any single participant suffices, a person who records his own exchange with an officer is not eavesdropping at all. Because the object is the private communication of others, a conversation carried on in the open at a traffic stop or on a sidewalk is not the subject matter the section protects.

The second definition closes the gap that all-party-consent states leave open. Section 13A-11-30(2) defines a private place as somewhere one may reasonably expect to be safe from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance, and then says the term "does not include a place to which the public or a substantial group of the public has access." A public street, a courthouse corridor, a shopping-center parking lot and a public park all fall outside it by that sentence.

The surveillance offenses are drafted the same narrow way. Section 13A-11-30(3) defines surveillance as "Secret observation" of another's activities for the purpose of spying upon and invading that person's privacy. Section 13A-11-32 then makes criminal surveillance a Class B misdemeanor only where the person "intentionally engages in surveillance while trespassing in a private place." Openly holding up a phone is not secret observation, and a public street is not a private place, so both elements fail before the trespass element is even reached. The aggravated version in § 13A-11-32.1 is a Class C felony but requires that the surveillance be for the purpose of sexual gratification.

One asymmetry in the article is worth knowing. Section 13A-11-36(a)(1) gives a complete defense to "a peace officer engaged in the lawful performance of his duties." That protects the officer's body camera and recording equipment; it does not protect a member of the public, whose protection has to come from the narrowness of the definitions instead.

Alabama also has no distance rule. A search of the Code returns no offense of approaching within a stated number of feet of an officer, no first-responder harassment offense, and nothing comparable to the 25-foot-after-warning provision Florida added in 2024. The operative limit is § 13A-10-2, obstructing governmental operations, which is committed only "by means of intimidation, physical force or interference or by any other independently unlawful act", and whose subsection (b) states that the section does not apply to obstructing the making of an arrest.

Criminal eavesdropping under § 13A-11-31 is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in the county jail or at hard labor for the county under § 13A-5-7(a)(1) and a fine of up to $6,000 under § 13A-5-12(a)(1). Criminal surveillance under § 13A-11-32 is a Class B misdemeanor, up to six months under § 13A-5-7(a)(2) and up to $3,000 under § 13A-5-12(a)(2), and it requires trespass in a private place. Section 13A-11-35 adds a separate Class B misdemeanor for knowingly or recklessly using or divulging information obtained through criminal eavesdropping or criminal surveillance, so publishing an unlawfully captured recording is its own offense.

Section 13A-11-37 provides for forfeiture of an eavesdropping device. A person who physically interferes with officers while filming risks obstructing governmental operations under § 13A-10-2, a Class A misdemeanor, or resisting arrest under § 13A-10-41, a Class B misdemeanor; § 13A-10-2(b) removes obstruction of the making of an arrest from the reach of that section, leaving § 13A-10-41 to cover it.