EarshotIs it legal to record a meeting?
Short answer: usually yes, if you're in the conversation — but the rules change with geography, and a video call can put people from several jurisdictions in the same room. Here's the plain-English version for the US, Australia, the UK and the EU, and the one habit that keeps you safe almost everywhere.
This is general information, not legal advice. Recording law is jurisdiction-specific and changes; the safe move for anything consequential is to check your local rules or ask a lawyer. Statute names are given so you can look them up. Where the law is genuinely unsettled, this guide says so rather than pretending it's simple.
The one rule that works almost everywhere
Tell everyone you're recording, at the start, and give them a chance to object. All-party consent — everyone agreeing — satisfies the strictest laws in every region below, so leading with disclosure is the approach that travels. On a video call with participants in different states or countries, you're effectively bound by the strictest rule in the room, which makes "announce and get a nod" the sensible default rather than a legal nicety.
United States: one-party vs all-party consent
Federally, the US is a one-party consent country: under the Wiretap Act (18 U.S.C. § 2511), a participant may record a conversation they're part of, because their own consent counts. Federal law is a floor, though — states can be stricter, and about a dozen require all-party consent (sometimes called two-party consent).
These states are widely treated as all-party consent for private conversations. The exact national count is genuinely debated at the margins (a few states split the rule between phone and in-person, or between civil and criminal law), so treat this as the well-established core rather than a closed list:
| State | Key statute |
|---|---|
| California | Penal Code § 632 (protects a "confidential communication") |
| Florida | Fla. Stat. § 934.03 |
| Illinois | 720 ILCS 5/14-2 (eavesdropping) |
| Maryland | Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 10-402 |
| Massachusetts | Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99 (bans secret recording) |
| Pennsylvania | 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5703 |
| Washington | RCW 9.73.030 |
Two nuances worth knowing. In Massachusetts, the offence is specifically secret recording — recording openly, with the device or the fact disclosed, generally isn't a violation, which is exactly why announcing helps. And several states (Connecticut, Oregon, Nevada, Montana) apply different rules to phone calls versus in-person conversations, so "one-party" or "all-party" isn't always a clean label. When participants span multiple states, default to all-party consent.
Australia: it varies by state and territory
Australia has no single national rule for private recording — each state and territory has its own surveillance-devices or listening-devices law, and they differ. Broadly:
- A participant can generally record in Queensland (Invasion of Privacy Act 1971), Victoria (Surveillance Devices Act 1999) and the Northern Territory (Surveillance Devices Act 2007).
- All parties generally must consent in New South Wales (Surveillance Devices Act 2007), South Australia (Surveillance Devices Act 2016), Western Australia (Surveillance Devices Act 1998) and Tasmania (Listening Devices Act 1991).
- The ACT (Listening Devices Act 1992) lets a participant record in some circumstances — it's often mis-grouped, so treat it as nuanced.
Two things catch people out across Australia. First, most of these laws protect only a "private conversation" — one where a party reasonably expects it isn't being overheard or recorded. Second, and critically for a notes app: recording lawfully is not the same as being allowed to share it. Even where you may record, most jurisdictions place separate, stricter limits on communicating or publishing that recording to people who weren't in the conversation. There's also a narrow "protection of lawful interests" exception in some states, which courts read strictly — it isn't a licence to record "just in case."
United Kingdom and the EU: recording plus data protection
In the UK, recording a conversation you're part of, purely for your own personal use, is not in itself a criminal offence — there's no participant-level two-party rule like some US states. The catch is data protection. Under UK GDPR there's a "domestic purposes" exemption for purely personal use, but it's narrow: the moment you record for business or professional purposes, or you share or otherwise process the recording, UK GDPR applies. Businesses can't rely on the personal-use exemption at all.
Across the EU, a recording that contains identifiable people is personal data, so processing it needs a lawful basis under Article 6 GDPR (usually consent or legitimate interests) plus transparency — you have to tell people what you're recording, why, and how long you'll keep it. The household exemption is read narrowly; the CJEU's Ryneš ruling (C-212/13) held that home CCTV capturing a public space fell outside it.
Don't treat "the EU" as GDPR alone, either. Several member states have their own criminal recording laws on top of GDPR, and they're often stricter than the UK — for example Germany's § 201 StGB (violating the confidentiality of the spoken word) requires all-party consent, and France's Article 226-1 of the Penal Code restricts recording private conversations without everyone's agreement.
Does it matter whether a bot joins the call or you record locally?
Legally, no — the obligation attaches to recording the conversation, not to the mechanism. Whether a notetaker bot sits in the participant list or an app records quietly on your PC, the same consent and disclosure duties apply. There are two practical wrinkles worth being honest about: a visible bot doubles as a form of notice, which can actually help in "secret recording" jurisdictions, while a silent local recording gives no inherent signal — so if you record locally, you are the one who has to say it out loud. And the meeting platform's own terms of service may impose recording rules of their own, independent of the law.
Earshot records locally rather than sending a bot, which keeps your audio on your machine — but it doesn't change your responsibility to disclose. The app gives you the tools; telling people is still on you.
A practical checklist
- Announce it. Say you're recording at the start of the meeting, and note it in the calendar invite for good measure.
- Get agreement, especially across borders. If anyone is in an all-party jurisdiction, you need everyone's consent — assume you do when you're unsure.
- Mind the "share" step. Being allowed to record doesn't automatically let you circulate the transcript. Keep sensitive recordings to the people who were there.
- Know where your data lives. Recordings are personal data. Storing them locally, on hardware you control, is easier to defend under GDPR and friendlier to a privacy-conscious room than a third-party cloud. Here's where your audio actually goes with local vs cloud notetakers.
Sources include 18 U.S.C. § 2511 and the named state statutes; the Australian state and territory surveillance and listening-devices Acts; UK GDPR and the ICO's domestic-purposes guidance; Article 6 GDPR and CJEU Ryneš (C-212/13); Germany § 201 StGB and France Penal Code Art. 226-1. Accurate to the best of our knowledge as of July 2026 and not a substitute for legal advice.
Keep the record on your side.
Earshot records meetings locally on your Windows PC — no bot, no cloud copy. Free and open source to self-host.