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Comment by Miner49er | Hacker News Reader

It's probably illegal too. It's illegal in most states to record conversations unless you have consent from one or all parties in the conversation.

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Single party recording is legal in 38 states.

https://fireflies.ai/blog/call-recording-laws-in-50-states-3...

It's also specific to phone call recording. Nothing about recording the audio of someone talking outside your house.

First-- this is a summary of statutes for recording phone calls; the laws are not always the same in each jurisdiction for making an audio recording in public.

And we're in a thread where someone is describing a scenario where neighbor A records person B talking to child C. Neighbor A is not a party to the conversation. Whether a state has a one party or two party statute, this behavior would likely violate it.

>> Whether a state has a one party or two party statute, this behavior would likely violate it.

Fascinating. How does Ring get around this? Has no one tried to sue to force the issue?

It might be hard to sue Ring; they'd claim they were not responsible for capturing a neighbor conversation and it's intended for use on your own property.

And to sue the neighbor, well, you'd have to know that they actually were capturing your conversation and feel like suing your neighbor.

The neighbor isn't a party to the conversation though?

But will anyone actually enforce the law?

I haven't been following this very closely, but my assumption is that the proliferation of recording devices have rendered these laws impractical to enforce, thus somewhat moot.

My guess is that only applies to private conversations? If you're talking with someone in public (and arguably the outside of your property is public) do they need your permission to record you?

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