Denmark Recording Laws (2026): One-Party Consent, GDPR, and the Pending Deepfake Copyright Act

Denmark is a one-party consent country: any participant in a conversation or phone call may record it without notifying anyone else, under Straffeloven § 263, stk. 2, which prohibits only the interception of communications between others. Businesses recording calls face additional obligations under GDPR.

Denmark permits participants in a conversation to record it without the other party's knowledge or consent, under a one-party consent rule grounded in Straffeloven (the Danish Penal Code). GDPR and the Danish Data Protection Act (Databeskyttelsesloven) then layer data-protection obligations on top for anyone processing recordings in a business context. A landmark pending amendment to the Copyright Act, expected to reach parliament for a vote in mid-2026, would make Denmark the first EU member state to give individuals an exclusive copyright-style right against AI-generated deepfakes of their face, voice, and physical characteristics.

This article covers Danish national law. For EU-wide recording rules across all member states, see EU recording laws. For data privacy context, see Denmark data privacy laws.

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Quick Answer: One-Party Consent in Denmark

Denmark operates a one-party consent rule. Any person who is an active participant in a conversation or phone call may record that conversation without telling the other participants, and without any legal obligation to obtain their consent. The recording is lawful as long as the person doing the recording is genuinely a party to the exchange.

That consent structure comes from Straffeloven § 263, stk. 2, which criminalises only the interception of communications between others, meaning conversations the recorder is not part of. Once you are a participant, § 263, stk. 2 does not apply to your own recording of the exchange.

Two separate limits apply to everyone, however:

1. Sharing or disseminating a private recording without the consent of the persons involved is prohibited under Straffeloven § 264d.
2. Where a business records customer or employee calls, GDPR and the Databeskyttelsesloven impose independent obligations, including a lawful basis, transparency, and purpose-limitation requirements, regardless of the one-party consent rule.

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Straffeloven § 263: The Interception Framework

The core Danish prohibition against secret recording sits in Straffeloven § 263, stk. 2, which provides (in official English translation):

"Any person who unlawfully, by means of equipment, secretly listens to or records statements made in private, telephone conversations or other conversations between others, or negotiations in a closed meeting in which the person is not taking part or to which the person has obtained access by unlawful means, shall be liable to a fine or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding six months."

The key phrase is "conversations between others." If you are a party to the conversation, you are not intercepting communications between others; you are recording a communication in which you yourself participate. Danish courts and legal commentary consistently read § 263, stk. 2 as permitting participant recording.

What § 263, stk. 2 Prohibits

The provision targets three fact patterns:

• Eavesdropping without participation. Secretly listening to, or recording, a private conversation that takes place entirely between third parties.
• Closed-meeting interception. Recording negotiations or closed-session meetings you have no right to attend.
• Unlawful-access interception. Recording a meeting you gained entry to through unlawful means, even if others in the meeting are unaware.

A person who plants a hidden microphone in a room to record a conversation between two other people without being present commits an offence under this section. The same is true for wiretapping telephone lines to capture calls between third parties.

Stk. 3: Equipment-Assisted Observation

Straffeloven § 263, stk. 3 separately prohibits using a telescope, binoculars, camera, or other optical equipment to observe a person in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, even if you could observe them directly with the naked eye. This provision is distinct from the image-privacy sections below, focusing on covert surveillance rather than photography.

Penalty

Violation of § 263, stk. 2 and stk. 3 is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to six months under Straffeloven § 263, stk. 2. Aggravated or professional interception carries enhanced penalties under general sentencing principles.

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Straffeloven §§ 264a to 264d: Image Privacy and Dissemination

Four provisions in chapter 27 of Straffeloven address privacy violations connected to photography, observation, and the distribution of private images or information. They operate alongside, not instead of, the § 263 framework.

§ 264a: Photography and Observation in Private Places

Section 264a prohibits photographing, filming, or otherwise recording a person who is in a place that is not openly accessible to the public, or using optical equipment to observe such a person from outside. The test is whether the person is in a location where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy: their home, a changing room, a hotel room, a toilet or bathroom, a private garden screened from view, and similar spaces.

Photographing someone on a public street, in a park, at a public demonstration, or in any space that members of the public generally access is not prohibited by § 264a. The decisive question is accessibility and reasonable privacy expectation, not the physical address.

§ 264b: Voyeuristic Recordings

Section 264b targets recordings that capture intimate areas of a person's body without consent: covert recordings beneath clothing (upskirting) and similar intrusions on bodily privacy. Danish courts have treated these as distinct from the general observation prohibition in § 264a because the harm is the capture itself, regardless of whether the surrounding space is "private" in the § 264a sense.

§ 264c: Exploiting Unlawfully Obtained Information

Section 264c extends liability to persons who obtain or use information that was originally gathered in violation of § 264a. It is not a defence that you did not take the photograph yourself; knowingly receiving, using, or exploiting material captured in violation of § 264a is itself a criminal offence.

§ 264d: Dissemination of Private Information and Images

Section 264d prohibits spreading or forwarding:

• Photographs or images of a person depicting circumstances that ought to be kept from the public, or
• Information about a person's private life, whether or not that information was obtained unlawfully.

This is the provision most frequently applied to non-consensual sharing of intimate images (sometimes called "revenge pornography") and to leaking private correspondence or medical information. The prohibition covers digital forwarding and social-media posting as much as physical distribution.

Violation of §§ 264a, 264c, and 264d is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to six months.

Child Sexual Abuse Material

Straffeloven §§ 230 and 235 apply where the subject is under 18. Recording obscene images of a minor for the purpose of sale or dissemination (§ 230) and distributing such material (§ 235) are punishable by fines or imprisonment for up to two years, rising to up to six years in aggravated circumstances.

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GDPR and Databeskyttelsesloven: The Data-Protection Layer

Denmark implements EU Regulation 2016/679 (the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR) through the Danish Data Protection Act, Lov nr. 502 af 23. maj 2018 (Databeskyttelsesloven). The Danish Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, supervises compliance.

When GDPR Applies to a Recording

GDPR applies whenever a recording constitutes "processing of personal data" about an identifiable natural person. An audio recording of a named customer, or a video recording of a recognisable employee, is personal data. The one-party consent rule under Straffeloven tells you whether making the recording is a criminal act; GDPR tells you whether storing, sharing, or using it is a data-protection act. Both regimes apply in parallel.

GDPR Article 6 requires a lawful basis for every processing operation. The bases most relevant to recordings are:

• Consent (Article 6(1)(a)): Freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. Silence, inactivity, or pre-ticked boxes do not satisfy this standard.
• Contract (Article 6(1)(b)): Recording is necessary to perform or prepare a contract with the data subject.
• Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)): Recording is required by law.
• Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): The controller's legitimate interest overrides the data subject's rights. Datatilsynet has held that public authorities cannot rely on this basis; it is available only to private-sector controllers.

Datatilsynet's Guidance on Voice Recordings

Datatilsynet has consistently treated voice recordings as more intrusive than written records, noting that audio captures tone, emotion, and background context beyond the semantic content of the words. That heightened intrusiveness raises the standard for the necessity assessment under GDPR.

In 2019, Datatilsynet addressed what lawful basis a company may use to record customer calls for documentation purposes. The authority's view: where recording is genuinely necessary to document an agreement or transaction, and where no practical alternative (telephone note, follow-up email) exists, the controller may be able to rely on legitimate interests. However, recording for quality-assurance and training purposes requires the separate, explicit consent of the data subject, because those purposes serve the controller's interests, not the data subject's needs.

TDC Case (2019): Consent Required for Training-Purpose Call Recording

On 11 April 2019, Datatilsynet ruled against TDC A/S, Denmark's largest telecommunications company, for recording customer calls with only a passive disclosure ("calls may be recorded for training purposes") and no mechanism for customers to consent or object. When one customer asked that a call not be recorded, the service agent said it was not possible to stop the recording.

Datatilsynet rejected TDC's argument that training purposes qualified as a legitimate interest and found the practice violated GDPR. The key holding: a business cannot lawfully record calls for training without obtaining affirmative consent from the data subject beforehand.

Danish Business Authority Case (2021): General Recording of All Incoming Calls

In July 2021, Datatilsynet ruled against the Danish Business Authority (Erhvervsstyrelsen) for recording every incoming call since June 2018 and storing the recordings for 96 hours. The Business Authority argued the recordings were needed to protect employees from threats and for training.

Datatilsynet held:

• General recording of all calls is not "necessary" given the rarity of actual threats.
• Training purposes require data-subject consent.
• Public authorities cannot use "legitimate interests" as a legal basis (Article 6(1)(f) is unavailable to public bodies in Denmark).

The Business Authority was ordered to bring its practices into compliance within four weeks and received formal serious criticism from Datatilsynet.

Datatilsynet Ruling on Child Welfare and Illegally Obtained Recordings (2024)

In September 2024, Datatilsynet addressed a case in which a father used illegal wiretapping under § 263, stk. 2 to record the mother of his child, and then forwarded the recordings with a child welfare complaint to Helsingør Municipality. The municipality initially set the recordings aside, but the Family Court (Familieretshuset) asked it to reconsider.

Datatilsynet, after consultation with the Data Protection Council, held that the municipality's use of the recordings was lawful under GDPR Article 6(1)(e) (exercise of official authority) because the overriding interest was the child's welfare. The ruling illustrates that Danish authorities may in defined circumstances use illegally obtained recordings when a significant public interest overrides the privacy harm, but this is a narrow exception rather than a general rule.

Key GDPR Obligations for Businesses Recording in Denmark

• Transparency (Article 13/14): Data subjects must be informed that recording is happening, the purpose, the legal basis, and the retention period.
• Purpose limitation (Article 5(1)(b)): Recordings gathered for documentation cannot later be repurposed for training without a fresh legal basis.
• Storage limitation (Article 5(1)(e)): Recordings must be deleted when the purpose is fulfilled. Danish practice treats 30 to 90 days as a reasonable retention period for routine call recordings absent specific legal requirements.
• Special categories (Article 9): If a call recording captures health data, trade-union membership, or other special-category information, an Article 9 basis is also required.

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Phone Call Recording in Denmark

If you are a party to the call, you may record it without consent under Straffeloven § 263, stk. 2. That right belongs to individual participants, not to companies acting as third-party call processors.

For businesses:

• Training and quality-assurance recording requires explicit, affirmative consent (TDC ruling, 2019).
• Documentation recording where no practical alternative exists may rely on legitimate interests or contract performance, but the necessity test is demanding.
• Public authorities must use consent as their legal basis; they cannot rely on legitimate interests.

For individuals:

• You may record a call you participate in; you may not record a call entirely between other people.
• You may use the recording for your own evidence purposes; distributing it publicly or sharing it widely without consent of the other parties may engage § 264d.

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In-Person and Ambient Recording

The same one-party participant rule applies to in-person conversations. If you are present in a meeting or discussion, you may record it. If the meeting is a closed session to which you have been denied entry, recording it from outside, or from inside after unlawful entry, violates § 263, stk. 2.

Several Danish municipalities, including Sønderborg, have published guidance confirming that citizens may audio record meetings and conversations they participate in with government officials, consistent with the national legal position. Video recording of municipal case-worker meetings is separately restricted under the TV Surveillance Act (TV-overvågningsloven, Lov nr. 182 af 2023) and Datatilsynet guidance.

An Ombudsman opinion (FOB nr. 05.578) addressed the limits on municipalities restricting a citizen's right to record: restrictions are permissible only where objectively justified, and officials must explain the reason and direct the person to the complaints procedure.

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Recording Police Officers in Denmark

Danish law does not prohibit members of the public from filming or photographing police officers on duty in public places. The Constitution, § 77, protects freedom of expression including the right to document events in public. Filming a police stop, arrest, or use of force from a safe distance that does not obstruct operations is consistent with that constitutional protection.

Copenhagen Police have stated publicly that there is "no basis for charging a person who is passively filming a police officer on duty." The limits are practical: if a person's filming physically interferes with police operations, officers may lawfully order the person to move back.

Complaints about police refusals to be filmed, or confiscation of recording devices, may be submitted to Den Uafhængige Politiklagemyndighed (the Independent Police Complaints Authority).

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Workplace Recording in Denmark

Whether an employee's covert workplace recording is lawful depends on a fact-specific balancing of interests, not a blanket prohibition. The Danish Supreme Court (Højesteret) addressed this squarely in 2020.

The 2020 Højesteret Ruling

A customer-service employee had a dispute with his employer over unpaid commissions. During a meeting with his manager about the dispute, he secretly recorded the conversation. The employer discovered the recording and summarily dismissed the employee, arguing that covert recording of a supervisor was a fundamental breach of the duty of loyalty.

The district court and high court upheld the dismissal. Højesteret reversed. The court held that the act of recording itself does not automatically constitute a breach of the employment relationship. Whether it does depends on a specific assessment weighing:

• The purpose and background of the recording, including whether the employee had a legitimate need to secure evidence of a rights violation.
• The nature of the information recorded, including whether it contains trade secrets or confidential information about third parties.
• The subsequent use of the recording, including whether it was disclosed beyond the immediate dispute.

In this case, the employee recorded the meeting to have his own account of what was said during a spontaneous, unscheduled discussion about his own rights. The content was about the dispute, not confidential business information. The recording was used in legal proceedings, not distributed publicly. Højesteret found the interests of the employee justified the recording.

Practical Guidance After Højesteret

The ruling does not grant employees a blanket right to record every workplace conversation. Courts consider each case individually. Recording is more likely to be justified where:

• The employee is documenting a potential violation of their own rights (unpaid wages, bullying, discrimination).
• The content recorded does not include trade secrets, client confidences, or sensitive third-party information.
• The recording is kept private and used only as evidence in a legitimate dispute.

Recording is more likely to be a dismissible offence where:

• The employee records board meetings, confidential negotiations, or client calls for reasons unrelated to protecting their own rights.
• The recording is leaked or distributed beyond the dispute context.
• The employer has a clearly communicated, objectively justified no-recording policy.

Employer Monitoring of Employees

Employers may monitor employees' electronic communications under limited conditions. Any monitoring programme must:

• Rest on a legitimate business purpose (security, legal compliance) rather than general surveillance.
• Be disclosed to employees in advance through a clear, accessible policy.
• Comply with GDPR proportionality and data-minimisation obligations.
• Be documented and reviewed periodically.

Datatilsynet has indicated that systematic monitoring of employee calls or messages for productivity purposes is unlikely to meet the proportionality standard absent a specific, documented risk.

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Voyeurism and Non-Consensual Intimate Images (§ 264d)

Straffeloven § 264d is Denmark's principal tool against non-consensual sharing of intimate images, a category of harm sometimes referred to as image-based abuse or "revenge pornography." The provision prohibits distributing photographs or information about a person's private life, or images depicting circumstances that ought to be withheld from the public, without the subject's consent.

The 2019 amendment to Straffeloven strengthened § 264d to explicitly cover:

• Sharing intimate images originally made with consent but later distributed without it.
• Digital forwarding across any platform, including private messaging apps.
• Images obtained through § 264b voyeuristic recording.

Violators face fines or imprisonment up to six months. Aggravated repeat offences, or widespread distribution, attract higher sentences under general sentencing guidance.

The prohibition is separate from the deepfake provisions under the pending Copyright Act amendment discussed below. A realistic AI-generated intimate image of a real person may engage both the existing § 264d framework (as material depicting private circumstances without consent) and, once enacted, the new Copyright Act sections.

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CCTV and Video Surveillance

Businesses and private individuals operating CCTV cameras in Denmark must comply with:

• TV-overvågningsloven (TV Surveillance Act): Cameras must be clearly signed. Coverage must be limited to the controller's own property. Cameras may not be directed at public roads or neighbours without specific authorisation.
• GDPR Article 13: Data subjects entering surveilled areas must be informed of the processing.
• Storage limitation: Datatilsynet guidance treats 30 days as the standard maximum retention period for routine CCTV footage; longer retention requires a documented justification.

Police and public-authority surveillance (including traffic cameras and anti-terrorism cameras) is governed by Retsplejeloven (the Administration of Justice Act), which requires judicial authorisation for targeted interception of communications and places procedural constraints on persistent surveillance.

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Denmark's AI Act Implementation: Law No. 467 (2025)

Denmark enacted Law No. 467 af 14. maj 2025 (Lov om supplerende bestemmelser til forordningen om kunstig intelligens) to satisfy the organisational and enforcement requirements that EU Regulation 2024/1689 (the EU AI Act) places on member states. The law entered into force on 2 August 2025.

Designated authorities under Law No. 467:

• Digitaliseringsstyrelsen (Agency for Digital Government): notifying authority, principal market surveillance authority, and single point of contact with the European Commission.
• Datatilsynet: market surveillance authority for AI systems involving the processing of personal data.
• Domstolsstyrelsen (Danish Court Administration): market surveillance authority for AI systems in the justice sector.

AI Act prohibitions relevant to recording. The EU AI Act prohibits a set of AI practices across all member states, including the use of real-time remote biometric identification systems in public spaces for law-enforcement purposes (subject to narrow exceptions), and AI systems that use subliminal techniques or exploit vulnerabilities to manipulate individuals. Biometric identification tools that analyse audio or video recordings to profile individuals by ethnicity, political opinion, or similar sensitive characteristics fall within these prohibited categories.

Denmark's justice opt-out. Denmark maintains a constitutional opt-out from certain EU justice and home-affairs measures. As a result, AI Act provisions governing law-enforcement use of facial recognition, predictive policing, and remote biometric identification do not apply in Denmark at the EU level; Denmark' national rules under Retsplejeloven apply instead. Datatilsynet oversees compliance with applicable GDPR obligations for those systems.

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Denmark's Pending Deepfake Copyright Amendment

This is the most globally significant development in Danish recording and privacy law in 2025-2026. Denmark has proposed amending its Copyright Act to become the first EU country to give every natural person an exclusive, transferable right over AI-generated realistic reproductions of their face, voice, and physical characteristics.

Background and Legislative History

The Danish government announced the proposed amendment to the Ophavsretslov (Copyright Act) on 26 June 2025, with the bill submitted for public consultation on 7 July 2025. The proposal drew immediate international attention because it uses copyright law, rather than a separate personality-rights or data-protection statute, as the enforcement vehicle.

A snap general election in Denmark disrupted the original timeline, which had targeted entry into force on 31 March 2026. An amended draft bill was re-notified to the European Commission under the TRIS procedure on 31 October 2025. As of May 2026, parliamentary adoption is expected in mid-2026, with entry into force on 1 July 2026 if adopted.

The bill has not yet been enacted. Content on this page will be updated when the Folketing adopts the amendment and a law number is assigned.

What the Amendment Would Do

The proposed amendment introduces two new provisions to the Copyright Act:

Section 65a (Performing Artists): Performing artists receive an exclusive right over realistic AI-generated digital imitations of their artistic performances. A record label or production company could not generate a convincing AI version of a named singer's voice and release it commercially without the artist's consent. Protection lasts for the artist's lifetime plus 50 years.

Section 73a (All Natural Persons): Any person, not only artists, would have an exclusive right over realistic AI-generated imitations of their face, voice, body, or other identifiable physical characteristics. A person whose face is used to create deepfake content, for any purpose including pornography, political manipulation, or commercial advertising, without their consent, could demand:

• Immediate removal of the content.
• Compensation and damages under general Danish law.
• Enforcement through Digital Services Act (DSA) takedown procedures against platforms.

Protection would last for the person's lifetime plus 50 years after death.

Exceptions

The proposed sections exclude content that constitutes parody, caricature, satire, or pastiche, preserving space for legitimate commentary and creative expression. The exception would not apply, however, where the imitation constitutes harmful misinformation.

Why Copyright Law, Not Personality Rights?

Danish legal scholars and the government's explanatory notes identify several reasons for using the copyright framework rather than creating a new personality right:

• The copyright framework is well-understood by platforms, rights-clearance practitioners, and courts.
• Copyright law creates transferable rights, allowing, for example, a professional athlete or musician to licence the use of their likeness under controlled conditions.
• The DSA's notice-and-action mechanism is already built around intellectual property; framing the deepfake right as copyright-adjacent allows direct use of that mechanism against hosting platforms.

Critics, including the Kluwer Copyright Blog and scholars writing on the European Parliament Think Tank platform, have noted that treating a person's face as "copyright" sits uneasily with copyright doctrine (which protects creative works, not biological facts) and may create complexity in rights management. The debate is ongoing.

Significance for Cross-Border Readers

For non-Danish creators, publishers, and platforms, the most immediate implication is that once the law is in force, content depicting realistic AI-generated likenesses of Danish citizens distributed in Denmark (and arguably to Danish users globally, under territorial extension arguments common in EU IP enforcement) will require consent or must fall within the parody/satire exception. Denmark's EU Council presidency advocacy has raised the prospect of similar measures at the EU level.

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Journalist and Press Freedoms

Danmarks Riges Grundlov (the Danish Constitution) § 77 protects freedom of expression and freedom of the press from prior censorship. Denmark consistently ranks among the highest-scoring countries in global press-freedom indices.

Press Council Ethical Rules on Covert Recording

The Danish Press Council enforces the Press Ethical Rules (Pressenævnet vejledning, revised 22 May 2013). On covert recording, the rules state:

"Clandestine recordings should only be published if the persons involved have given their consent, or if the interests of society clearly supersede the claim for protection of the individual and it is not possible, or only possible with great difficulty, to obtain the necessary journalistic evidence in any other way."

Covert recording is therefore a last-resort investigative tool for journalists, justified only when public interest is substantial and conventional evidence-gathering has failed.

The Jersild Case (European Court of Human Rights)

In Jersild v. Denmark (1994), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Denmark had violated journalist Jens Jersild's Article 10 freedom-of-expression rights by convicting him for broadcasting a news report in which he interviewed persons who made racist remarks. The Court found that Denmark's restriction on the journalistic work was disproportionate. The case remains a landmark precedent for the principle that journalists who broadcast lawfully obtained content about matters of public concern are protected, even when the underlying speakers expressed views that could be prosecuted if stated by a private citizen.

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Cross-Border Recording Involving Denmark

If one party is in Denmark and the other is in a different country, the applicable recording-consent rule depends primarily on where the recording is made and where it is later used or prosecuted.

• Denmark-to-Denmark call: One-party consent rule applies under Straffeloven.
• Denmark-to-Germany or Denmark-to-France: Germany and France are also one-party consent countries in comparable ways, reducing cross-border conflict risk for participant recorders.
• Denmark-to-US call recorded by the Danish party: The Danish party's recording complies with Danish law. Whether it also complies with the relevant US state law depends on that state's consent rules. If the other party is in a US all-party consent state (California, Washington, Florida), the US participant's state law may apply to the US-side participant.
• GDPR territorial scope: GDPR applies to any controller or processor established in the EU/EEA, and to non-EU entities that process personal data of EU residents in connection with offering goods or services to them. A US company recording calls with Danish customers must comply with GDPR even if it has no Danish establishment.

For country-specific cross-border comparisons, see world recording laws.

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Penalties Summary

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Scenario Quick-Reference Table

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This page presents general legal information about Danish recording laws as of May 2026. It is not legal advice. Laws change; the deepfake copyright bill described above has not yet been enacted. For advice about your specific situation, consult a lawyer licensed in Denmark. For GDPR compliance questions, contact a qualified data-protection professional or Datatilsynet directly at www.datatilsynet.dk.

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