Iraq Recording Laws: Privacy Rules and Penalties (2026)

Iraq has no statute, federal or regional, that squarely addresses whether a person may record a conversation they are part of. The nearest constitutional protection, Article 40's bar on state monitoring and wiretapping, applies only by judicial decision and does not reach private recording between individuals.

No Dedicated Recording Law: What Iraq's Constitution Protects

Iraq's Penal Code No. 111 of 1969 and its 2005 Constitution form the entire body of law touching on recording in the country, and neither one contains a provision written for the specific question of participant recording. Article 17 of the Constitution grants "the right to personal privacy so long as it does not contradict the rights of others and public morals," and separately protects the sanctity of the home, but it says nothing about recordings, calls, or communications (Constitution of Iraq, Art. 17).

Article 40 comes closer. It guarantees "the freedom of communication and correspondence, postal, telegraphic, electronic, and telephonic," and states that such communication "may not be monitored, wiretapped, or disclosed except for legal and security necessity and by a judicial decision" (Constitution of Iraq, Art. 40). Read on its own text, Article 40 constrains the state: it bars government monitoring and disclosure absent a judicial decision. It does not, on its face, say anything about one private individual recording a conversation with another, and no source located for this page extends it that far.

No other federal statute fills that gap. There is no wiretapping act, no interception law, and no recording-consent statute anywhere in Iraq's national code. See the world recording laws hub for how other countries approach the question, including neighboring Iran and Jordan.

What Gets Used Instead: Defamation, Insult and Obscenity Under the Penal Code

In practice, Iraq regulates recording indirectly, through Penal Code provisions that punish what is recorded or published rather than the act of recording itself. Human Rights Watch's documentation of Iraq's speech-related laws describes three articles doing this work.

Article 433 criminalizes defamation, defined as publicly imputing to someone a matter that, if true, would expose them to punishment or public scorn, punishable by up to one year in prison and/or a fine. Article 434 criminalizes insult, covering imputing something dishonorable or disrespectful, or hurting someone's feelings, even without alleging a specific fact, punishable by up to one year in prison and/or a fine of roughly 1,000,000 IQD. Article 403 criminalizes producing, possessing, or distributing content that violates public integrity or decency with exploitative intent, punishable by up to two years in prison and/or a fine of roughly 1,000,000 IQD; Human Rights Watch's reporting describes it being applied to filmed or photographed content, not to the underlying act of recording.

The distinction matters for anyone trying to work out where they stand. None of these three articles asks whether a recording was made with or without consent. Each is triggered only if the recording, or its content, is later published, shared, or shown in a way that exposes, insults, or offends someone. Making a recording and keeping it private is not, on the description available for this page, what any of the three articles reach.

The full verbatim text of the 1969 Penal Code could not be independently retrieved for this page; every official mirror tried returned an error or an unreadable file. The description above rests on Human Rights Watch's secondary account of the articles' operative language, not a first-hand reading of the statute.

The Missing Framework: No Data Protection Law, No Enacted Cybercrime Law

Two pieces of legislation that would give Iraq a more direct answer both remain unfinished. According to the digital-rights group SMEX, a draft Information Technology Crimes Law, Iraq's proposed cybercrime statute, has been repeatedly introduced, suspended, and withdrawn since at least 2011 over human-rights objections from journalists, civil-society groups, and international bodies concerned it would criminalize ordinary online speech. It remains unenacted as of 2026.

Iraq also has no enacted data-protection statute. A 2026 law-firm outlook analysis reports that a draft Personal Data Protection Law, first circulated in 2021, remains pending. That account could not be fully verified against the bill's own text or a legislative record for this page, and no enactment timeline is stated here as fact.

A narrower, press-specific protection does exist at the federal level. The Journalists Protection Law No. 21 of 2011 bars arrest or interrogation of journalists without a judicial warrant. Its definition of "journalist" is reported to exclude citizen journalists and bloggers, and contemporary reporting widely regards the law as ineffective. It does not address filming or recording rights at all.

Kurdistan Region: A More Direct and More Actively Enforced Law on Filming

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) operates under its own parliament-enacted statute that federal Iraq has no equivalent of: Law No. 6 of 2008, the Law to Prevent Misuse of Telecommunications Equipment. Its Article 2 is, of everything found for this page, the single most concrete and most litigated recording-specific provision anywhere in Iraq, federal or regional.

The verbatim text of Article 2 was not obtained for this page. What follows is drawn from a paraphrased academic conference summary and press analysis, not a first-hand reading of the statute, and should be read with that caveat. According to that paraphrase, Article 2 criminalizes using telecommunications devices to threaten, insult, spread malicious false information, disclose private conversations or media, or violate another person's integrity, carrying penalties of six months to five years' imprisonment and fines of roughly 1 to 5 million Iraqi dinars (approximately USD 685 to 3,425).

Human Rights Watch has documented Article 2 being used against a KRI resident charged for filming a protest on his phone without "permission," with no legal clarity in the reporting on whose permission was required or how it could be obtained. Columbia Journalism Review reports that the law has been used systematically against independent journalists since roughly 2017, with penalties reported up to five years' imprisonment and fines in the USD 685 to 3,425 range.

The KRI layers two further media-specific statutes on top of Law No. 6. It maintains its own Press Law No. 35 of 2007, though this page's research did not reach that statute's text and no specific provision from it is described here. It also has a Right to Access Information Law No. 11 of 2013 that scores 98 out of 150 on the international RTI Rating, roughly 28th worldwide on paper, but is documented as unimplemented in practice.

The gap between the law on paper and enforcement on the ground shows up directly in press-freedom incidents. In February 2025, Kurdistan security forces assaulted and teargassed news crews covering a protest, arrested two journalists, raided a television station, and confiscated broadcast equipment that was not returned.

What the Evidence Actually Covers: Journalists and Protests, Not Everyday Recording

Nearly every documented enforcement action described above, on both sides of the KRI/federal line, involves a journalist, a camera operator, or someone filming a protest, not an ordinary person recording a private conversation with a friend, relative, or business counterpart. In August 2022, Iraqi Special Forces arrested a reporter and camera operator covering protests in Baghdad, assaulting the reporter and confiscating a camera that was not returned after release, a federal-level incident with the same press-and-protest fact pattern as the KRI cases above.

No source located for this page documents a case of an ordinary private citizen prosecuted, federally or in the KRI, for secretly recording another private citizen in a personal or business conversation. That absence of documented cases is worth stating honestly rather than treated as an answer: it may mean the practice is tolerated, or it may simply mean such cases are not the ones that get reported or litigated. Readers whose situation is a personal conversation, not journalism or a public protest, are in the thinnest part of the evidence base described on this page.

Penalties at a Glance

What This Article Could Not Establish, and Where Care Is Needed

No statute or regulation governing CCTV or workplace monitoring was located in either federal Iraq or the Kurdistan Region, and the Higher Judicial Council material on the admissibility of audio recordings could not be retrieved, so no admissibility rule is stated here. Every mirror of the Penal Code that this research attempted was unreadable, so the articles above are described from institutional documentation that quotes them rather than from the code itself.

On recording in public, the practical position matters more than the statutory one. Documented incidents include a Kurdistan Region resident charged under Law No. 6 of 2008 for filming a protest on his phone without permission, with no clarity about whose permission was required, security forces in the Kurdistan Region teargassing news crews and confiscating broadcast equipment in February 2025, and Iraqi special forces detaining a reporter and camera operator in Baghdad in August 2022 and keeping the camera. Filming security forces or protests carries a real risk of detention and equipment loss regardless of what the Penal Code does or does not say.

Where no authority could be located, that is a statement about what is findable in public sources, not a conclusion that the conduct is permitted or prohibited. Anyone facing a specific situation should take advice from a lawyer licensed in the jurisdiction.

This article provides general legal information about recording and privacy laws in Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region, and is not legal advice. Information was verified as of July 27, 2026, from the primary and secondary sources cited, several of which are law-firm, media, or advocacy-organization accounts rather than verified statutory text. Consult a lawyer licensed in Iraq or the Kurdistan Region before recording a conversation or relying on a recording as evidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I legally record a conversation I'm part of in Iraq?

No federal Iraqi statute directly answers this. The closest constitutional provision, Article 40, bars state monitoring and disclosure of communications without a judicial decision, but by its own text it constrains government action, not private recording between individuals. No wiretapping or recording-consent law fills that gap.

Is recording someone in Iraq covered by defamation or insult law?

Only indirectly. Penal Code Articles 433 (defamation) and 434 (insult) punish publishing or sharing content that exposes someone to scorn or damages their reputation, not the act of recording itself. A private recording that is never shared falls outside what these articles, as described in Human Rights Watch's documentation, reach.

Does the Kurdistan Region have a specific law against filming?

Yes, and it is the most concrete recording-related provision found anywhere in Iraq. Article 2 of KRI Law No. 6 of 2008 has been used to charge people for filming protests without 'permission,' with penalties reported at six months to five years' imprisonment and fines of roughly USD 685 to 3,425. Its verbatim text was not available for this page; the description here comes from academic and press summaries, not the statute itself.

Does Iraq have a data protection law?

No. Iraq has no enacted data-protection statute as of 2026. A draft Personal Data Protection Law has reportedly been pending since 2021, according to a law-firm analysis that could not be independently verified against the bill's own text for this page.

Are Iraq's recording rules mostly about journalists, or do they apply to ordinary people too?

The documented enforcement, on both sides of the KRI/federal line, is overwhelmingly about journalists, camera operators, and people filming protests. No case was found for this page of an ordinary private citizen prosecuted for secretly recording another private citizen's personal conversation, so the evidence base for that everyday scenario is much thinner than the press-freedom record might suggest.

Is there a cybercrime law in Iraq that covers unauthorized recording?

Not yet. A draft Information Technology Crimes Law has been repeatedly proposed, suspended, and withdrawn since at least 2011 over human-rights objections, according to the digital-rights group SMEX, and it remains unenacted.