Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bionet!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: bcsaic!carroll@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Speaker Phones and the Courts
Message-ID: <13081@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 5 Oct 90 06:52:19 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 33
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 715, Message 6 of 8


In article <12692@accuvax.nwu.edu> Jeff Dalton <esl!bambam!jsd@ames.
arc.nasa.gov> writes:

>I'm guessing that a tape recording of a phone conversation cannot be
>used as evidence in court unless both parties are aware they're
>being recorded. 

	The law in Indiana used to be (and probably still is) that you
had to have the consent of the person to whom you were talking in
order to tape him, and had to provide the periodic beep to remind him
that the tape recorder was running.

	I don't know what the law is here in Washington State; they
don't print it in the phone book like they used to in Indiana.

>But what if one end of the conversation is on a
>speaker phone with witnesses listening.  I would guess that the 
>witness could testify about the content of the conversation and the
>person on the other end of the phone wouldn't have to know someone
>else is listening.

>Does anyone know anything about this?

	Only that anyone who has ever talked to a person using a
speakerphone would know immediately whether one is in use, and should
thus be warned that he is talking to the world and not just to one
person's right ear. It would be fairly easy, I'd think, to establish
that in court (though I'm not a lawyer).


	Jeff Carroll
	carroll@atc.boeing.com