The purpose of this law is obviously to facilitate criminal wrongdoing by Illinois law enforcement personnel and judges.
A police officer who is doing his job WANTS as many audio and video records as possible from as many people as possible. Suppose for example that the cop shoots a suspect who turns out to be unarmed, and is accused of murder or manslaughter. Suppose also that a bystander has recorded the shooting, and has a video and audio recording in which the suspect said, “I’m gonna blow your brains out, pig!” while making a suspicious move—thus making the shooting both reasonable and necessary. Well, if it’s a felony punishable by 15 years to “eavesdrop” on that officer, the bystander might just decide to erase that video rather than be caught with it—or maybe not make the video in the first place, if he knows the law.
Alternatively, suppose the officer is NOT doing his job. There is a video of an Ohio cop screaming at a driver he has stopped and then threatening to “execute” him. Does the state of Illinois want to say with a straight face that it is a felony to record that? (In this case, the abusive cop was so stupid that he did it in front of his own car’s video camera.) That sounds like obstruction of justice to me, i.e. Illinois legally mandates obstruction of justice, destruction (or non-production) of evidence, and so on.
In any event, this leads to the need to know your right and duty as a juror to refuse to enforce laws like Illinois “eavesdropping” law. See http://www.fija.org.
Circulate the above as widely as possible.
Or just decide that since the rules on recording are unjustly tilted in favor of the state, no recording he ever makes may ever be used to help a state actor, until they fix the rules.