Again, the privacy interests that may justify banning audio recording are not limited to those that the Fourth Amendment secures against gov- ernmental intrusion. But the Illinois eavesdropping statute obliterates the distinction between private and nonprivate by criminalizing all nonconsensual audio recording regardless of whether the communication is private in any sense. 720 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/14-1(d). If protecting privacy is the justification for this law, then the law must be more closely tailored to serve that interest in order to avoid trampling on speech and press rights.

Basically, if cops are in public saying shit that bystanders, lookie loos, passers by, whoever can hear, then it’s not private. Whatever expectation of privacy they might assert is meaningless unless they’ve taken reasonable measures to guarantee it. Such measures generally run along the lines of getting the hell off a public street, close whispering, moving into a closed squad car, etc. The onus is on the government servant to guard their conversations and the conduct they wish to be private against witness by an overtly present public, not upon outsiders to refrain from hearing, seeing, or recording what is plainly being said and done on the public’s dime.