Recording Police in Georgia: Why the Surveillance Statute Stops at the Private Place

The question of whether you may film Georgia police is answered by reading what the state actually criminalized. Part 1 of Article 3 of Chapter 11 of Title 16 covers wiretapping, eavesdropping, surveillance and related offenses, and the operative section is Code Section 16-11-62, eavesdropping, surveillance, or intercepting communication which invades privacy of another, and divulging private message. The full text of the section was set out again when the General Assembly revised it in 2022, so the language is on the public record in the acts the Governor signed that year.

Paragraph (1) makes it unlawful for any person in a clandestine manner intentionally to overhear, transmit, or record the private conversation of another which shall originate in any private place. That is three separate conditions, and holding a phone up during a traffic stop on Peachtree Street fails all three. The recording is not clandestine if the phone is visible, the conversation is not the private conversation of another when you are one of the speakers, and a public roadway is not a private place.

Paragraph (2) is the video half. It reaches a person who, through the use of any device and without the consent of all persons observed, observes, photographs or records the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view. Georgia wrote both limits into the same clause, so the paragraph does not touch conduct that happens in public view. The subparagraph that follows for property owners uses the same idea in plain words, allowing an owner or occupier of real property to record for security purposes, crime prevention, or crime detection in areas where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

The most telling part of the section for this question is subparagraph (2)(D). It carves out a law enforcement officer or his or her agent who uses a device in the lawful performance of official duties to observe, photograph, videotape, or record the activities of persons that occur in the presence of such officer. Georgia legislated for police recording the public. It did not legislate a matching right for the public recording police, which is why Georgia has no counterpart to California Penal Code 148(g) or New York Civil Rights Law 79-p.

The section is not a fossil. In 2022 alone the General Assembly amended it twice. Senate Bill 539 added a paragraph making it unlawful to photograph or record patients, without the consent of all patients observed, in a facility operated by a county board of health created pursuant to Code Section 31-3-1, subject to the same exceptions in subparagraphs (2)(A) through (2)(D). Senate Bill 10 added a paragraph aimed at covert tracking, making it unlawful to place, or direct someone else to place, a global positioning system monitoring device or other electronic monitoring device on a motor vehicle owned or leased by another person without consent where that person holds a protective order under Code Section 17-17-16, 19-13-4 or 19-13A-4 or an equivalent order from another jurisdiction. A legislature editing this section in two separate acts in one session had every opportunity to restrict filming officers and did not.

One practical point about the other camera. The Georgia Department of Public Safety tells its own members to record. Policy 11.06, the DPS manual on searches without a warrant, instructs that whenever a member obtains consent to search, the consent should be documented by use of the in-car video camera whenever possible. A Georgia State Patrol stop is therefore often being recorded from the patrol car while you are recording from the driver's seat.

The risk when filming Georgia officers is almost never Code Section 16-11-62. It is the offenses the Department of Public Safety lists on its own pocket reference for troopers, form DPS-32D, Georgia Criminal and Traffic Codes, dated 07/2024. A. A. 16-10-25. Filming is not itself obstruction, but stepping between an officer and a person being arrested, refusing a lawful order to move back, or reaching toward an officer while holding a phone can be charged under 16-10-24, and the same card lists Disorderly Conduct at 16-11-39 for good measure.

Code Section 16-11-62 is a criminal prohibition in Title 16, so if a recording genuinely did capture a private conversation in a private place in a clandestine manner it is prosecuted as a crime rather than treated as a civil matter. If a Georgia officer orders you to stop recording an encounter that is happening in public view, nothing in 16-11-62 supplies the authority for that order, and the encounter with the Georgia State Patrol is likely to be on the trooper's in-car video in any event.