What You Need to Know About Recording Your Phone Calls

Despite the NSA’s insistence that it’s totally kosher for them to record Americans’ phone calls, the rest of us have to make sure we cross our t’s and dot our i’s before we press the red button. Rick Broida has a piece up on CNET that works as a basic guide to being your own personal Gene Hackman. The first thing to get straight is the legality of what you’re doing:

“There are both federal and state laws pertaining to this, and it goes without saying that you should investigate them before recording any phone conversation.”

Recording people without their knowing could mean liability later, especially if you plant to post or release the tapes. Since not all of us are trying to surveil our friends, Broida points out that the best way to keep yourself safe when recording something more innocuous — an interview, for example — is to get all parties to verbally consent on tape.

Broida then suggests some useful apps that can take the place of the old Talkboy you were planning to use. Google Voice is sterling for incoming calls and, when used in tandem with GetHuman, can get you one step closer to making your own Comcast misery recording. To learn about these and other apps, click the link below to get to Broida’s article.

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