Is It Illegal to Record Someone in Arizona? ARS 13-3019

Is It Illegal to Record Someone in Arizona?

It depends entirely on what you record. Arizona is a one-party consent state for conversations: under A.R.S. § 13-3005 and the exemptions in § 13-3012(9), recording a conversation is lawful if you are a party to it or a party consents. But visual recording is governed by a much stricter statute: A.R.S. § 13-3019 makes it a felony to secretly photograph, film, or record a person — with or without a device — in places and situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Audio: The One-Party Consent Rule

Intercepting a conversation you are not part of, without any party’s consent, is a Class 5 felony under 13-3005 — that is the wiretapping scenario: bugging a room, recording your ex’s phone calls, planting a recorder. But if you are a participant in the conversation, or one participant consents, the recording is exempt under 13-3012(9). That is why people may lawfully record their own phone calls and meetings in Arizona — and why secretly recording other people’s conversations is a felony.

Visual: Where Recording Becomes a Sex-Crime-Adjacent Felony

Section 13-3019 prohibits knowingly and secretly photographing, videotaping, filming, digitally recording, or even viewing another person without consent in two situations:

• In a restroom, bathroom, locker room, bedroom, or other place with a reasonable expectation of privacy, while the person is urinating, defecating, dressing, undressing, nude, or engaged in sexual activity; or
• In a manner that captures the person’s genitalia, buttock, or female breast (clothed or unclothed) that is not otherwise visible to the public — the “upskirt” provision.

The classification ladder is steep:

• Class 5 felony — the standard violation with a device;
• Class 6 felony — a violation without a device (a second offense returns to Class 5); and
• Class 4 felony — disclosing or publishing such a recording when the person depicted is recognizable.

Note that disclosure is its own crime: forwarding or posting a recording made in violation of the statute is separately punishable — and more severely than making it.

The Neighboring Statutes

Prosecutors choose between several overlapping laws in recording cases: voyeurism under A.R.S. § 13-1424 (surveilling for sexual gratification), unlawful disclosure of intimate images under § 13-1425 (“revenge porn”), and 13-3019. Which statute is charged changes the felony class, the registration exposure, and the available defenses — and it is frequently negotiable. See our guides to voyeurism defense and sextortion under 13-1428.

Defenses

• No reasonable expectation of privacy — public places, visible-to-the-public settings, and posted-security contexts fall outside the statute;
• Consent — actual or reasonably understood, particularly between partners;
• Not secret — open, known recording is not “surreptitious”;
• Identity and attribution — who actually made or shared the file;
• Statutory exemptions — posted security systems, law enforcement, child monitoring.

How Tamou Law Group Defends Recording Cases

These prosecutions carry sex-offense stakes, so we defend them at every layer: the phone search that produced the files, the privacy-expectation and consent elements, the attribution question of who actually recorded or shared, and the charging choice among 13-3019, voyeurism, and the intimate-image statutes. The right statute, or none, is often the whole fight.

Related reading: voyeurism defense (13-1424), was the search of your phone legal?, and our Scottsdale sex crimes lawyer page. Call 623-321-4699, 24/7.