Is it illegal to record someone without their permission?

Four questions that decide whether a recording is legal

1. Are you part of the conversation? If not, you need at least one participant's consent, and in some states everyone's. Recording other people's conversation without anyone's consent is eavesdropping.
2. Where is everyone? Each state sets its own rule, and when people are in different states, the stricter rule may apply.
3. Is the conversation private? Most laws protect only conversations where people reasonably expect not to be overheard. Speeches, public meetings and loud talk in public usually aren't protected.
4. Why are you recording? Even in one-party states, recording to commit a crime or a tort (such as blackmail) is illegal.

One-party vs all-party consent

One-party consent means at least one person in the conversation agrees to the recording. If you're in the conversation, your own consent is enough. This is the federal rule (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)) and the rule in most states and D.C.

All-party consent, often called two-party consent, means everyone in the conversation must agree. States with this rule for most private conversations are California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada and Oregon apply it only to some kinds of conversation: phone calls in Connecticut (where it's a civil rule) and Nevada, in-person conversations in Oregon, and in Michigan a statute that courts have read to let participants record.

The details differ more than lists suggest. Massachusetts bans secret recording even when the conversation wasn't private; Washington treats a recorded announcement as consent; California applies its all-party rule to every call involving a cell phone. Our recording consent laws by state table has every state's rule, statute and notes, with sources.

Is it legal to record a conversation in person?

In a one-party state, you can usually record a private conversation you take part in, such as a talk with a landlord or a neighbor, without telling them. In an all-party state, you need everyone's agreement if the conversation is private. In Oregon, the law requires that everyone be "specifically informed" before you record an in-person conversation, even though Oregon is one-party for phone calls.

What you can't do almost anywhere is leave a recorder running in a room you've left, or hide a device to capture conversations you're not part of. That's eavesdropping, and in most states it's a crime.

Can you record a phone call?

Yes, in most cases, if you're on the call and either you and the other person are in one-party states or everyone agrees. Phone calls raise two extra issues:

• Calls across state lines. There's no single rule for which state's law applies. In Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (2006), the California Supreme Court applied California's all-party law to a Georgia company recording calls with California clients. If anyone might be in an all-party state, get consent.
• Special phone rules. California's law covers any call involving a cell or cordless phone, confidential or not. Connecticut lets people sue over a recorded call unless everyone agreed in writing or on the recording, a notice was recorded at the start, or a warning beep played. Nevada courts require all-party consent for calls even though in-person conversations are one-party.

Phone apps don't settle the question for you. Some phones announce call recording to the other person and some don't, and that announcement alone may not be enough consent in every state.

Crime or lawsuit? What can happen

An illegal recording can lead to criminal charges, a civil lawsuit, or both.

Criminal penalties

Under federal law, an illegal interception can mean up to five years in prison (18 U.S.C. § 2511(4)). State penalties range widely: Montana and Washington treat violations as misdemeanors, California allows up to a year in jail for a first offense, and Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania can treat violations as felonies, depending on the facts. In most states, using or sharing a recording you know was made illegally is a separate offense.

Civil liability

Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2520) and many states let the people you recorded sue you. California's law allows $5,000 per violation or three times the actual damages. Some states, including New York, Kentucky and Alabama, don't give a right to sue in the recording statute itself, though general privacy claims may still be possible. Connecticut's phone-call rule is purely civil.

The recording may be useless

Federal law bars illegally intercepted communications from being used as evidence (18 U.S.C. § 2515), and many states have similar rules. A secret recording made to prove a point can end up excluded from the case it was meant to help.

Meetings and video calls

The same consent laws apply to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and every other video call. Built-in recording in Zoom and Teams tells everyone in the meeting that it's being recorded, which helps. Other tools that record your screen or computer audio usually show no notice, so it's up to you to tell people.

Because people on a video call are often in different states, the simplest approach is to treat every meeting as all-party: say at the start that you're recording and give people a chance to object. Our guides to recording a Zoom meeting and recording a Teams meeting cover the steps, and the state-by-state guide includes ready-made consent scripts.

Recording at work

State consent laws apply at work the same as anywhere else. On top of that, many employers have policies that forbid recording meetings without permission. Breaking one can get you disciplined or fired even when the recording was legal.

Those policies have limits. The National Labor Relations Board has found that a blanket ban on recording can violate federal labor law when it stops employees from documenting working conditions together (Whole Foods Market, 2015), though the Board's standard has changed more than once since. If you're thinking about recording because of a workplace dispute, an employment lawyer can tell you what's allowed where you are.

For employers and HR teams, a clear written policy prevents most problems: who may record, how participants are told, how consent is captured, and where recordings are stored and for how long.

Recording police and people in public

Conversations in public places, where anyone could overhear, usually aren't protected by consent laws. Recording police officers doing their jobs in public is also protected by the First Amendment, according to federal appeals courts covering most of the country, including the First (Glik v. Cunniffe, 2011), Third (Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 2017), Fifth (Turner v. Driver, 2017), Seventh (ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 2012), Ninth (Askins v. DHS, 2018), Tenth (Irizarry v. Yehia, 2022) and Eleventh (Smith v. City of Cumming, 2000) Circuits. The Supreme Court hasn't decided the question.

That right isn't unlimited. You can't interfere with officers, and some states have passed laws requiring people to keep a set distance from police; some of those laws have been challenged or blocked in court, so check your state. Massachusetts' ban on secret recording can't be applied to secretly recording officials doing their jobs in public (Project Veritas Action Fund v. Rollins, 1st Cir. 2020), and Oregon's law expressly allows openly recording an officer on duty.

Where Hark fits

Hark is a desktop app that records meetings on your own computer: your microphone, plus your computer's audio on Windows and Linux (on a Mac it records the microphone only). No bot joins the call, so nobody sees a recording notice unless you give one. That makes the habit on this page important: tell people you're recording, get their agreement, and only then let Hark transcribe the meeting and work out who said what.

A simple habit that works everywhere

1. Say you're recording before you start, or right as you start.
2. Ask if everyone is OK with it, and get a clear "yes" on the recording.
3. Repeat it when someone joins late.
4. Stop, or leave them out, if anyone objects.
5. Don't share recordings beyond the people who need them.

Doing this satisfies one-party and all-party states alike, and it's simply more respectful. For the full rules in your state, see recording consent laws by state.

Sources and citations

1. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2511, 2515, 2520, Cornell Legal Information Institute.
2. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporter's Recording Guide (state-by-state, accessed October 2026).
3. State statutes and notes for all 50 states and D.C.: recording consent laws by state.
4. Cal. Penal Code §§ 632, 632.7, 637.2; Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-570d; Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99; Or. Rev. Stat. § 165.540; Wash. Rev. Code § 9.73.030.
5. Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006).
6. Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011); ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012); Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F.3d 353 (3d Cir. 2017); Turner v. Driver, 848 F.3d 678 (5th Cir. 2017); Askins v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Security, 899 F.3d 1035 (9th Cir. 2018); Irizarry v. Yehia (10th Cir. 2022); Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332 (11th Cir. 2000).
7. Project Veritas Action Fund v. Rollins (1st Cir. 2020).
8. Whole Foods Market, Inc., 363 NLRB No. 87 (2015).

Last reviewed October 2026.