The fact that Illinois traditionally has some of the most corrupt politicians (and, some might argue, school officials) in the country has absolutely no correlation to tough laws on recording conversations, I'm sure.
Depending on local law it may be allowed to record your conversations without the other party's consent for personal use, as long as you don't reveal the recording to other parties. So the simple act of recording itself might be legal.
Reason.com's article here links to some illinoispolicy.org[1] as the 'original source', and illinoispolicy.org does not provide any citations. The rest of the articles on that site lead me to believe that they are fearmongering and not reporting.
It's blogspam all the way down.
1. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-13-year-old-charged-...
I was slightly amused at the notion that this will go on his "permanent record," because that is not a thing that exists. There are databases (plural) that provide data for background checks, social media accounts, etc., but a singular "permanent record" document simply doesn't exist and has never existed.
If the kid had started off the conversation by saying "I'm going to record this", then he would have been fine (legally speaking; the principle probably wouldn't be happy and likely wouldn't agree to it). Being informed that a conversation is going to be recorded and then proceeding with that conversation is granting implicit consent to the recording. The problem is he recorded it in secret, which means there was no consent.
In the case of journalists, when a journalist thrusts a tape recorder in your face and asks you something, it's pretty obvious it's being recorded, so answering the question is giving consent to the recording.
