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Comment by adionionio | Hacker News Reader

If it is legal where you live, you might want to get in the habit of secretly recording business dealings. I always have a recorder in my pocket when dealing with more than a few hundred dollars.

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Do it anyway. You can always not use the recording if the penalty for recording is going to be more than the benefit it gives you (unlikely).

Be careful of your jurisdiction. In some places, the act itself of secret recording can be a criminal offence. In that case, you will want to include the possibility of prison in your cost-benefit analysis.

E.g., Germany: StGB 201 § 201 Verletzung der Vertraulichkeit des Wortes https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__201.html

In some places, secret recordings are useless as evidence (e.g., two-party consent states in the United States), while in others even illegal recordings may be admissible anyway (e.g., Sweden).

I can't help but think secret recording laws are there to protect the elite more than the common person...

I think it still depends on local circumstances.

For example, in Germany, a lot of the privacy culture (and therefore, laws) came about because of how the secret police terrorised the common people, for example, using secret recordings and worse (e.g., secret evidence).

But in other places, sure, I would agree with you.

201 StGB is nowadays mostly used to prosecute people recording police actions. How... ironic.

It's legal in Sweden to record secretly as long as you are one of the parties in the recording.

Yeah, a good nuance that my original comment did not capture. Thanks. I edited my original to try to make what I meant clearer.

It was like that in Poland .. until some politicians got recorded and recordings leaked to the press, you can guess how that changed the law.

I think NY is the same IIRC.

Secret recording may be a criminal offense. I am not a lawyer in any jurisdiction, but it appears to be a felony in parts of the US. Admitting to felonies in court is probably not a good legal strategy. Even if you don't get arrested I am not confident the evidence would be admissible.

EDIT: I know there are places where secret recordings are illegal but don't know the expected penalties. Recordings are probably legal in a "one-party consent" state. Be wary; certain kinds of recording may be illegal even if recording is legal in general.

In a lawsuit, you will be required to hand over all relevant records. It is illegal to destroy them or fail to hand them over. The penalties for doing so could be severe.

But even if you get away with it, hiding evidence would be wrong. Don't respond to sleaze with yet more sleaze. Maybe you'll win the fight or maybe you'll lose it, but you will always lose something of yourself.

> But in any case it would be wrong. Don't respond to sleaze with yet more sleaze.

Is it wrong, or just illegal some places?

Is it only "sleaze" where it's illegal, or everywhere?

Secret recording is illegal in Germany. It violates Section 201 of the Criminal Code.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...

Is it true that if a business states that “calls may be recorded” then no matter where you live, it’s legal to record the call as well.

Yes. The most aggressive consent requirement for recording is 'two-party' consent, where the both people on the call need to be aware it's being recorded. If you say "this is/may be(ing) recorded" then both parties are aware.

If you tell a company calling that you might also be recording I found they like to end the call fast. Funny how it’s okay if they do it and hold all the evidence…

Yes, in a previous life I did some soul-sucking call center work for a large national mobile company and they specifically had a written policy at the root level of their knowledgeable system about call recording. Their instructions were that if anyone was recording the call you were to read a certain script and immediately disconnect, no questions asked. If they tried to do the 'this call may be recorded' thing you were supposed to seek clarification about whether the call is being recorded and if the answer was anything other than no, you were to read the same script and immediately disconnect.

These companies know that worker bee call center drones say things all the time that the company doesn't want preserved in a court of law later- mainly promises that the company doesn't want to have to uphold if they were outside policy. They take it very seriously. I suspect any major company with something to lose has a similar policy.

Nitpick but the two-party standard is actually "all party" to cover scenarios where there are more than two parties participating in the conversation.

In the US it's either one party (the majority of states) or all party.

Not in Germany. You have to get explicit permission or at least give the chance to deny consent, just because you consent doesn't mean the recording party did. It's a bit sad, IMO.

What I do is I inform and get consent from hotline agents during the call.

I am not a lawyer. This has a nice summary: https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...

If a business states that the call may be recorded, then they are already consenting. Therefore your recording would be the 2nd party consenting.

In the first paragraph on that page, it says:

"Determining which jurisdiction’s law controls in cases involving recording devices or parties in multiple states can be complex, so it is likely best to adhere to the strictest applicable law when in doubt, and/or get the clear consent of all parties before recording."

So it doesn't seem to be simple to determine what's legal in any given situation.

Staying on the line after being notified the other party is probably going to start recording soon is essentially giving consent. The caller could have just hung up if they didn't want to be recorded.

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