Recording of Call Contents

The lawful “use of electronic recording equipment” - when can you make a recording of a call’s contents (i.e., wiretapping and eavesdropping)?

The US Federal government (18 U.S.C. Sec 2511,) and many states have

“one-party consent” statutes, i.e., if you are a party to the conversation you can record it. However, note that not all states permit this (some have an “all-party” rule)! Note that these rules often apply to in-person recordings, radio/telecommunication, … , all “electronic communications”.

There are additional rules concerning Broadcasters - who must inform the person that the recording may be subsequently broadcast before the recording begins.

A summary of the rules for the US can be found at: http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html Links to an external site.

In addition, there are also laws concerning “employee privacy” which may also be relevant.

For the IETF policy on wiretapping see RFC 2804.

Slide Notes

IAB and IESG, “IETF Policy on Wiretapping”, Internet Request for Comments, RFC Editor, RFC 2804 (Informational), ISSN 2070-1721, May 2000 http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2804.txt Links to an external site.

Transcript

[slide387] But if it is, then these rules about lawful intercept come into play. And in the US, there's a very important distinction between one-party consent and two-party consent, or all-party consent. In some states, it's sufficient if one party says, Yes, I approve, I want to record this call. In other states, the case is every party has to be aware of and agree to the recording of the call. Some of you may have heard the political scandal long ago with Bill Clinton, when he was president, and I didn't have sex with that woman. Anyhow, the interesting feature was who ended up going to prison in all of it the girlfriend of Monica Lewinsky. Why? Because she recorded her phone conversations with Monica and then made those recordings available to another person, and she did so in a state that required all parties' permission for recording. But if she'd done it in a different state, she might have gotten away with it. But unfortunately, she did it in a state where everyone had to agree, otherwise it's an illegal recording. There are also rules for broadcasters. If they're going to broadcast your conversation, they have to inform you beforehand, and you have to have the ability to say yes or no. I give you permission to record my voice and play it on the radio or TV or whatever. And you can find these rules. There are also rules about employee privacy. You can also find an interesting policy that the IETF has written on why they're opposed to putting wiretapping into these various different systems.