The Illinois State Supreme Court recently struck down the state's eavesdropping law. The ruling came in two cases where the law's requirement of consent of all parties before a conversation could be recorded had been used in some places to prosecute individuals who recorded conversations that were really not private, or involved recording public officials doing their public duties. The Court found the language of the law was too vague and too broad in permitting these prosecutions. Now, members of Illinois General Assembly must pass legislation in order to put an eavesdropping law in place. The ACLU of Illinois has urged the General Assembly to maintain the important privacy protections in the previous law, protections that protect residents of Illinois against broad government intrusion. Ed Yohnka, ACLU of Illinois Communications Director noted the challenge here:
“It’s going to be important in the legislative process to ensure those privacies still remain even while we repair the part of the act the court found to be unconstitutional,” Yohnka said. “Now we go through this process of really needing an eavesdropping act that recognizes the importance of the First Amendment right to gather information but at the same time also protects individual privacy.”
