13-year-old voice recorder captured my entire professional career | Hacker News Reader

13-year-old voice recorder captured my entire professional career

theverge.com

78 pointsTomte100 comments

Fun Fact!

For those of you with an Apple Watch. The watch itself has a pretty impressive microphone and the built-in "Voice Memo" app is incredibly good at recording for long periods. After starting a recording, if you return to the watch screen there's no big "give away" that recording is happening.

I've started doing something similar to the Author of the article. Whenever I feel I'm entering a conversation I'll need later I start recording.

Recordings autosync back to the phone, the "Voice Memo" phone app can skip periods of silence, AND best of all the recordings can be easily exported to other things.

I thought my friends installing smart speakers I feel compelled to unplug was annoying...you're my worst nightmare!

You're just unplugging other people's things?

Other people are just recording their words?

"Smart speaker" sort of presupposes they're already in that other person's space, likely a home or apartment, maybe an office.

Invited in — without being told I may be recorded.

Absolutely. If I see one in a room I'm in, I'll immediately walk over and unplug it. Why would I choose to be recorded?

I don't even enter some peoples houses that have 'smart speakers'.

Why on earth do they have them is the question I can't figure out.

Because they assume a different risk factor than you do.

No, clearly they're just stupid, come on.

That battle has been lost. Even if people didn’t have a smart speaker, they almost certainly have a smart phone and it’s way, way worse from a surveillance perspective.

The speakers have a really great sound and I like turning my lights on and off with them . The also mesh well with my other devices.

>I've started doing something similar to the Author of the article. Whenever I feel I'm entering a conversation I'll need later I start recording.

Not sure where you're located, but some places require all parties to be aware that they're being recorded and not informing (and receiving consent) other parties can be a illegal act[0] in the US.

This link[1] looks at the US and other (a not very comprehensive list) countries.

I'm emphatically not saying you shouldn't record stuff, just that there are laws and you should be aware of them.

[0] https://recordinglaw.com/united-states-recording-laws/

[1] https://www.telemessage.com/call-recording-laws-an-internati...

This is a good point to bring up, and I am in a single-party-consent state.

But, if I'm being honest, I don't care. These recordings are for my own use, and beyond the anonymity the internet provides. No one knows I do this.

I have found having these recordings which I have automatically transcribed, to be easily searchable. To be a huge life saver when clients change system requirements mid-project, or bosses start attempting to gaslight.

People just think I have an amazing memory.

What do you use for auto transcribing?

otter.ai is excellent

What do you use for the automatic transcription? I have been thinking about a similar setup, albeit for my family life where consent is available.

> But, if I'm being honest, I don't care. These recordings are for my own use, and beyond the anonymity the internet provides. No one knows I do this.

Maybe you should care. If I didn't like you, and I knew that you did this, an anonymous tip would be all that would be required to get you facing felony charges.

Well, someone would also have to care enough to prosecute, which isn't guaranteed.

But the risk is there and everyone should be aware of it.

Nonconsentual recording of conversations seems like a pretty minor act to be a felony, but sure enough it is in 33 US states.

Things that affect politicians, lawyers, and big donors seem to get felony charges even for the slightest infraction. Funny that.

Because nobody else would ever object to being recorded without consent?

Felony charges are excessive though by any measure.

How quaint that you think an anonymous tip to law enforcement about someone recording people talking to them would even get so much as an official report written up. Unless it is being done in the commission of another crime, you might as well call in anonymous jaywalking tips.

Jaywalking isn't a felony in 33 states.

Felony or not, calling the cops and telling them that you suspect that someone has recorded you without your permission is never going to result in any action unless you have some sort of influence or your local cops are very bored and overzealous.

Coworker got sued because he one-party recorded an argument with a neighbor over some property maintenance issues and then revealed the recording.

This was in California, which is a two party state.

Being sued is quite different than being criminally investigated by the police.

You also say that the party in question, "revealed the recording". The comment in question above regarded a random citizen filing a complain with police that they have been illegally recorded. It is one thing to make an illegal recording, and then publicly release it, creating a record of your crime, and having a random person claim you made an illegal recording, and police opening an investigation based on your unsubstantiated allegation. Even if they were so inclined, the overwhelming majority of police departments have a massive queue of crimes to look into than an illicit recording that may or may not exist.

Relevant movie quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9CynvMlFyo

How do you prove that someone is changing requirements/what was decided previously if you can't show the recording?

You can send them written notes afterwards and ask for confirmation. Depending on the meeting you can also just say you want to record to make sure you get your notes right, and if they refuse you can ask them to be the one to put things in writing later for you to confirm.

> No one knows I do this.

Apple sure does :)

This is a common refrain on Reddit and other places, but does anyone know anyone who ever had a issue with this law?

If you aren't going to offer the recordings to the public in any way I can't see how you would even be caught.

I particularly like when people say you shouldn't record evidence of someone committing a crime. For someone to press charges they would have to admit that they are the person on the recording, commiting the crime.

If you never use the recording except for yourself you'll never run into an issue.

If you are a group that may someday be subpoena'd for something, you may want to consider the laws around it.

Note that if one side says the conversation may be recorded or monitored, I believe both can now record.

The person committing the crime does not always have to worry about being charged with a crime. The burden of proof is pretty high, and anyone with a half a brain will not explicitly state they are committing a crime.

On Reddit I've seen cases where the person was making violent threats and someone will always reply with this canard.

"Yes your honor, that's me saying 'I'm going to fing kill you', but it was recorded without my consent!" probably isn't a smart move, legally speaking.

I don't know, there is something about illegally acquired evidence, and that's the kind of technicalities attorneys love to use if it can benefit their clients.

That's really silly when if you need two/all party consent for the evidence to be admissible; you can object that there was no consent without acknowledging who was speaking. And the evidence can be objected to without being listened to by the judge/jury. Surprise evidence is strongly discouraged, and there's a procedure to enter into evidence before it's shown or heard.

On the other hand, illegally obtained evidence is not always prohibited from trial. It's most likely to be prohibited if it's a criminal trial and the evidence was illegally obtained by law enforcement or the government generally. An illegal recording by a non-governmental party, not acting on instructions by a governmental party has nuance and may be allowed.

>If you aren't going to offer the recordings to the public in any way I can't see how you would even be caught.

I'd appreciate it if you'd clarify this point. Are you implying (not saying you are, but it is a parsimonious reading of your assertion) that not getting caught doing something makes that activity legal/ethical?

Personally, I'm more concerned with the ethical implications rather than the legal ones, as many things that are legal are highly unethical.

I assume that I will be held to account for anything I say in the workplace. The pushback I get for that idea makes me wonder what the rest of you are saying behind closed doors, probably not things that are very ethical/legal.

Consider that you end up in a legal dispute with another company, and they can legally discover mountains of your recorded conversations which they can then trawl through to cherry-pick sound bites that support their case, while they themselves have been careful to discuss most things off the record. In that scenario you would be at a huge disadvantage regardless of the ethics and legality of your conversations.

I can't think of a single thing that I've ever said at work (since leaving the restaurant industry, that was a different sort of scene) that even taken in the most uncharitable way, could be edited or taken out of context in such a manner that would make me legally responsible for anything, or even be embarrassing.

I discuss work at work. I have no reports. I don't hire anyone. I'm a happily married man so I don't engage in flirting or anything that even appears not to be above board. I don't drink or go to holiday parties.

I live my life in public like someone is always recording, because even if they aren't they can just say "Will said...." and likely be believed anyway.

You've probably never had a fatal disease before, either :-)

I'm very curious what sort of things people are saying in the workplace that they are afraid of coming out.

I've found workplace conversation to be so sterile and bland that I can't even really conceive of what that would look like beyond the insane examples you see in HR videos. That sort of stuff happens in working class jobs, but I've never seen it in a office.

>I'm very curious what sort of things people are saying in the workplace that they are afraid of coming out.

I can't (and would never attempt to) speak for anyone else, but the content of the conversation is irrelevant.

I'm perfectly happy to stand behind everything I say (e.g., I didn't post stuff I knew would be poorly received with a throwaway account in this very thread and have been severely downvoted for it. N.B.: Not complaining about the downvotes, I knew they were coming and stand by my posts).

My issue is with surreptitious recording. Not because of what I say, but because it's wrong to record someone without their knowledge or consent -- regardlesss of the content.

Edit: Corrected myself. Meant to say "I can't (and would never attempt to) speak for anyone else," rather than "I can't (and would attempt to) speak for anyone else,"

One of your coworkers might propose some sort of anticompetitive behavior against a competitor, but your employer might never actually do it. Then the competitor might sue your employer, and in the discovery, the recording of your coworker proposing the behavior could be used against your employer.

Cardinal Richelieu[0] would like a word (well, a paragraph or two) with you.

A more recent treatment (albeit a fictional one) of that idea can be found here[1]

[0] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/cardinal_richelieu_183310

[1] https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/The_Illusion_of_Truth

Often quoted, rarely supported by actual evidence.

>Often quoted, rarely supported by actual evidence.

A fair point.

That said, why don't we do a little field research and record everything you say for a few months and see if we can generate some evidence one way or another?

What's that? You don't consent to such recording? Why not?

Yes. There is a little snark there, but that's kind of the point.

It's not about what you say, but whether or not it's ethical to record someone without their knowledge or consent.

The concern I’m raising is that a litigious party can take your words out of context to make a case against your employer. It behooves you not to produce lots of recorded material that can make life for you and your colleagues difficult in such a situation. It has nothing to do with how virtuous you are.

Btw just because you can’t imagine how your words may be taken out of context doesn’t mean a motivated attorney also lacks such imagination. ;)

That's why when you're arrested the advice is to not talk to the police without a lawyer. That's because the police can take what you say out of context and hang you with it.

>I assume that I will be held to account for anything I say in the workplace.

That's a reasonable assumption. Although I'd point out that while OP did mention some work-related stuff, they implied that they also record not work-related stuff.

My issue isn't with recording. It's with surreptitious recording -- whether in a workplace or otherwise.

That's as may be, but it's orthoganal to the question I asked:

   Are you implying (not saying you are, but it is a 
   parsimonious reading of your assertion) that not getting 
   caught doing something makes that activity legal/ethical?

So. do you believe that as long as you don't get caught, it's ethical?

My ethics have little to do with the law and more closely resembles Nicomachean Ethics[0].

I care more about the correct result as opposed to a correct process.

A thought experiment:

Someone is going to admit to you that they are actively molesting a child. It's illegal to record this conversation, and this person trusts you and considers you a friend, but if you did record it would provide evidence that would prevent the molestation of children in the future.

In my view not breaking the law in that case is unethical.

[0] "Aristotle emphasized that virtue is practical, and that the purpose of ethics is to become good, not merely to know. Aristotle also claims that the right course of action depends upon the details of a particular situation, rather than being generated merely by applying a law." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_ethics

I am familiar with the concepts.

But you've focused on a severe edge case, rather than the discussion at hand.

Moving the goalposts can be fun, I guess. Please do continue, as it's mildly amusing.

You wouldn't know if someone recorded you saying something mundane, they would have no incentive to release it, if released nobody would listen. It would only really matter if you appeared to do something wrong or actually did something wrong. All of the things that I can think of, that anyone would care about, are worse than not obeying a particular state law about recording devices.

I'm not sure why you try to present this as such a black and white situation.

You yourself have stated that what is ethical and what is legal is not always the same thing. If I surreptitiously record you admitting to a crime, is releasing that recording unethical, even if it's technically illegal? And do you really believe that the law should be used to prevent such activity?

I would argue that laws against recording people are unjust and clearly exist to make it harder to hold certain people accountable for their words and deeds.

What you do with a recording certainly can be unethical or illegal. If I record someone purely so that I can go back and take better notes or otherwise remember what we discussed, I see nothing unethical about that. Conversely, using such a recording to embarrass you, misrepresent you, or blackmail you, those activities are clearly unethical and in some cases clearly illegal.

You completely misunderstand my point.

Which is probably my fault. I'll elaborate.

I'm not so concerned about the legal ramifications of surreptitously recording conversations. I would never do that, as I believe it's unethical to do so.

Whether it's legal (and in many places, only one party needs to know that a recording is being made) or not, I believe that recording someone without their knowledge is unethical. Full stop.

That's it. I don't care (too much) about the law or whether or not there's any real jeopardy if someone breaks that law. It's still wrong.

Some may disagree with that assessment. But I do not want to be surreptitiously (I keep using that word. It definitely means what I think it means.) recorded.

tl;dr: Surreptitiously recording other people in the course of everyday life is wrong and unethical, regardless of circumstance.

It is your opinion that it's unethical to record people without informing them, and it's fine to take that position.

My position is that the act of recording someone without their knowledge is not inherently unethical, and that the reason for the recording and how you use it is what determines whether or not you are doing something unethical.

Isn't this an incredibly dangerous game Amazon is playing with Alexa devices, then? IIRC everything gets recorded.

Everything doesn't get recorded though so, no.

The things you say after "Alexa" get recorded, and that is a not-great way to imply consent, considering a number of humans are named that.

You can configure the wake word to be Alexa, Echo, Amazon, or Computer. Alexa is just the default.

Where, AFAICT, "consent" means "you have the option to stop talking, but I'm allowed to keep recording no matter what now that I've notified you".

Well, there is a giveaway, but one would need to know it and have good points in perception.

I generally use the assumption that I’m being recorded (with people / groups I don’t know well) as a speech filter / clarity motivator.

this is a great strategy and a patriotic one even, i mean, just imagine if the NSA were to lose their copy of your data and they'd actually need access to it. then they could just use whatever Intel Management Engine type backdoor software you need to access that person's personal devices and voila, you've got yourself a viable new copy of the file. let people collect their own evidence for you!

It's a wonderful thing when a physical device captures the Unix philosophy of doing one thing very well.

I would hope, for the author's sake, that there are similar devices that can be purchased new for professional use. Because for all the features, abilities, and advancements available on things like a smart phone, they unavoidably create a single point of failure. And then there's the refrain often heard from the Commodore 64 and 8 bit computing ilk: Newer isn't always better.

Sony ICD-UX570 is pretty nice, if looking for a similar product that is modern.

With the storage size of microSD cards, a low bit enough rate, and the auto pause feature combined, it's possible it could record your entire professional career on it without erasing anything.

Agreed, the ICD-UX560 is also nice, I have several. Zoom makes several slightly larger recorders that capture better audio though, the H1 and H2n are great. They can record in 24bit (higher dynamic range, easier to capture both soft and loud sounds) and 96KHz, and run on ordinary NiMH AA batteries (the Sony's have internal LiIon). The Sony recorders are 16bit/44.1KHz. However if you're recording to MP3 and just want to capture voice that may not matter as much since the quality will be reduced anyway. The smaller size of the Sony's may matter as well, they will easily fit in a pocket with little bulk whereas the Zoom's will be somewhat uncomfortable in a pocket (though they'll fit). If you're trying to be inconspicuous the Sony's look less like a recorder, the Zoom's very obviously look like recorders with prominent microphones or a mic grill screen.

The title made me think this was about a hand-made wind instrument which illustrated all the knowledge accumulated by a professional luthier in 13 years.

Funny, I thought it was about a teenage podcaster talking with a professional for a very long time.

It's funny how sometimes a casual purchase of an object ends up having such a profound impact.

I guess it is the limiting factor of time/space/money. You got the one you could have gotten and ran away with it as far as you could with it.

The only "gotcha" I'd say is that I'm not sure there were many Radio Shacks in Montreal, the author might have been thinking of a different store (Future Shop maybe)

The author is likely Canadian given their current biography snippet.

There were Radio Shacks in Canada, before they ended up being renamed The Source in 2004[0]. So in 2009, the year cited in the article, they would have gone to "The Source", but likely still thought of it as Radio Shack, the old name of the chain.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer)

Ah yes, that's most likely it!

> the rewind button didn’t function, which pushed the recorder past the point of usefulness.

What's more impressive is this being a hardware problem that can be fixed by rewiring the button. The electronics or firmware of the recorder is still functional.

Compare this to software apps and smart devices where it is so complex that we have absolutely no hope to fix when they break.

At one point, Apple started corrupting recordings from the Recorder app on iPhones. One Australian journalist lost his recording of an interview, and the person soon after died.

Of course, there was no way to get Apple to acknowledge the bug, or find a fix. Needless to say, nobody in that newsroom relies on Apple any more.

Is this documented as a more common occurrence? Or just one-off? Because if the latter, then could it be just an excuse for journalist's own fuckupery?

Nope, saw it myself. It was literally a corrupted file. There was nothing the journo could have done to have caused the issue. I downloaded it straight from the iPhone.

You should always record your professional interactions. Saves much trouble.

For a professional journalist I would recommend a model with dual card slots, especially if you do important interviews. Maybe even use two recorders with a split as the devices are quite compact. SD cards do fail, and Murphy's law always holds true.

Dual cards? Does it write to both? Do you have a specific recommendation?

I have no recommendation but there are field recorders that write the audio track to both cards - for redundancy and also so that two copies are available. There are still and video cameras that do the same thing.

If you want just a high quality audio recorder to use with a separate microphone the Zoom F6, or F8n would be a good choice. No need to set levels because they capture the entire dynamic range, and dual SD cards. Kind of big though. Sound Devices makes similar boxes, of similar or better quality but much higher price.

The ZOOM H1N is great. I've powered it via USB and recorded DAYS worth of audio without any issue. Battery life is hit or miss, if you got new AAAs you'll safely get about an hour or so.

I also love the idea of a single-purpose device

Hardware in physical reality is a useful abstraction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com