What does federal law actually allow?
Federal law lets you record a conversation you're part of. Under the federal Wiretap Act, it's lawful to intercept a communication when you're a party to it, or when one party has given prior consent (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)). That's the 'one-party consent' rule, and it's the baseline across the country.
There's a catch built into the same section. One-party consent doesn't apply if you record for a criminal or tortious purpose – blackmail, say, or an intentional tort. And the statute protects an 'oral communication' only when the speaker shows 'an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception' (18 U.S.C. § 2510). A private meeting clears that bar; a shout across a public plaza usually doesn't.
The penalties are not trivial. A federal wiretap violation carries up to five years' imprisonment and a fine (18 U.S.C. § 2511(4)). Separately, anyone whose communication you unlawfully record can sue you for damages, including statutory or punitive amounts plus attorney's fees (18 U.S.C. § 2520). Federal law is the floor, not the ceiling – your state can demand more.
Eleven states require everyone's consent
A minority of states flip the default to all-party consent. Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer count eleven: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington. In those states every participant has to agree before you record – one person's yes isn't enough.
The exact count is genuinely fuzzy, and not from sloppiness. Several states are 'mixed': all-party for phone calls, one-party in person, or the reverse. Nevada is nominally one-party, but its Supreme Court reads the phone statute as all-party. Oregon's phone rule is one-party, and its old in-person all-party rule was struck down in July 2023 (Project Veritas v. Schmidt, Ninth Circuit) on First Amendment grounds. Connecticut is one-party criminally but demands all-party consent, or a recorded warning, under a separate civil phone statute.
California is the one to watch. Its Invasion of Privacy Act penalizes recording a 'confidential communication' without all parties' consent, with fines up to $2,500 per violation and up to a year in jail (Cal. Penal Code § 632). A separate section covers cellular and cordless calls (§ 632.7), so a mobile call gets the same all-party treatment.
What if people are in different states? Play it safe. When a call spans jurisdictions, it's hard to say in advance which state's law controls, so the safest approach is to follow the strictest law that could apply, or simply get everyone's consent. One clear yes on the recording solves most of this.
Why are AI notetakers getting sued?
The lawsuits landed in 2025, and they target tools that join calls on their own. In Brewer v. Otter.ai (N.D. Cal., filed August 15, 2025), the notetaker recorded its customer and, allegedly, 'unsuspecting third parties' on the call, drawing federal Wiretap Act and California CIPA claims.
A second suit hit the biometric angle. Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp. (C.D. Ill., filed December 18, 2025) alleges the assistant 'automatically joins virtual meetings' on Zoom, Teams, and Meet and collects voiceprints without consent. Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act treats a voiceprint as a biometric identifier (740 ILCS 14/10), and voice is exactly what a transcription tool captures.
BIPA is unforgiving on process. A company can't collect a voiceprint until it gives written notice and gets a signed release (§ 15(b)). Miss that, and damages run $1,000 per negligent violation and $5,000 per intentional one (§ 20). Across a class of meeting participants, those per-person figures add up fast. Wiretap exposure is a category risk for any always-listening bot; Otter is the test case.
Uploading your own recording changes the risk
The difference is structural. The lawsuits above share one fact pattern: a bot silently joins a live meeting and records people who never opted in. Pepys doesn't work that way. There's no meeting bot and no auto-join – you either upload an audio or video file you already have, or paste a link to one. Nothing joins your call uninvited.
That model puts the consent decision back where it belongs: with you. Because you capture the recording yourself, you're a party to the conversation, and you decide up front whether everyone's agreed. Once consent is clear, transcribing a Zoom meeting or an interview is just a matter of uploading the file – the legal question is settled before any transcription starts.
Where the audio lives matters too. We don't train on your recordings or transcripts, and you can auto-delete the source file after it's transcribed while keeping the text. For a sensitive meeting, that's one less copy sitting on someone else's server.
So, is it legal to record a meeting?
Usually, yes – if you're in the meeting and you're in a one-party-consent state or country. The safe rule is simple: tell people you're recording, get a clear yes, and capture it on the recording itself. In an all-party state like California or Illinois, that yes is mandatory, not a courtesy.
When people span states, follow the strictest law that could apply. A transcript is a working record, not a certified one. If you need an official, sworn record like a deposition, that's certified legal transcription, a different job from an AI draft. For everything else, an accurate, ownable transcript of your own recording is the goal.
One caveat worth stating plainly: this is general information, not legal advice, and the law changes. Illinois rewrote its own eavesdropping statute in 2014 after the state Supreme Court struck it down. When a recording is high-stakes, check your state's current rule or ask a lawyer. When you're ready to turn a recording you're cleared to use into text, upload it and transcribe it.
