State v. Page

OPINION

MANNHEIMER, Judge.

In State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), the Alaska Supreme Court held that the police must obtain a warrant before surreptitiously recording people’s conversations. We are now asked to decide whether the police may surreptitiously record people’s ac tivities on videotape without first obtaining a Glass warrant if the police confine themselves to the video-recording capabilities of the electronic equipment and do not employ its audio capabilities.

Edward Page, Jr. was suspected of selling cocaine. The police hid videotaping equipment in a Fairbanks apartment and,…