On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking the enforcement of an Illinois eavesdropping law. The broadly written law -- the most stringent in the country -- makes it a felony to make an audio recording of someone without their permission, punishable by four to 15 years in prison. Many states have similar "all-party consent" law, which mean one must get the permission of all parties to a conversation before recording it. But in all of those states -- except for Massachusetts and Illinois -- the laws include a provision that the parties being recorded must have a reasonable expectation of privacy for it to be a crime to record them. The Illinois law once included such a provision, but it was removed by the state legislature in response to an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that threw out the conviction of a man accused of recording police from the back of a squad car. That ruling found that police on the job have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/supreme-court-recording-police_n_2201016.html
