A telephone is seen in the Alaska State Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (James Brooks photo/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska judges approved no police wiretaps of phone lines in 2025, the Alaska Department of Law disclosed in a legally required annual report this month.
The state similarly reported no wiretaps in 2024 or 2023.
The U.S. federal court system has not yet published its list of approved wiretaps for 2025. Its 2024 report doesn’t include any in Alaska; one wiretap, approved by former federal Judge Joshua Kindred, was approved for 30 days in 2023 for a narcotics case.
Under Alaska law, a wiretap occurs only when no one on a phone call is aware that it is being recorded. If one side of a conversation is aware of a recording, it is not legally a wiretap.
The state has been legally required since the 1990s to disclose the number of wiretaps approved by state judges, but the Alaska Department of Law failed for decades to publish a statutorily required wiretap report. It began reporting in 2018 after reporting by the Juneau Empire.
Neither the state of Alaska nor the U.S. Court System publish reports listing the number of times they intercept internet traffic.
Those intercepts are believed to be more common. Last year, an investigation by the Anchorage Police Department led to the arrest of a former state medical board member for possessing images of children being sexually abused. That person later died in a house fire.
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