Glossary
One-party consent
One-party consent is a recording rule under which a conversation can be recorded lawfully when one of its participants agrees, which is usually the person doing the recording. The US federal wiretap law uses this rule, and individual states may set stricter ones.
Updated October 17, 20262 cited facts, each traced to its source
Also called single-party consent.
One-party consent means that a conversation can be intercepted or recorded lawfully when one of the people in it has agreed. That person is often the one doing the recording, because they are a party to the conversation themselves. The US federal Wiretap Act says it is not unlawful to intercept a communication when the person intercepting is a party to it, or when one of the parties has given prior consent 1.
Under this rule, a participant does not need the others' agreement
The federal rule is a default that states can change. Delaware's interception statute, for example, allows a person to intercept a communication when that person is a party to it, or when one of the parties has given prior consent 2. Under either statute, a participant who records their own conversation does not need every other participant to agree first.
The rule describes the recording party's position, not the other people's. A person who is not in the conversation, such as a device or a service that joins it as a separate listener, is not automatically covered by the same reasoning. Whether the rule covers that case depends on the wording of the statute.
A concrete example: recording your own call
You take a phone call with a supplier in Delaware and record it on your own phone so you can check the terms later. You are a party to the call, so the one-party rule covers your recording. The supplier does not have to agree first. If you later dictate a summary of the call, the summary is your own writing, and the recording and the summary stay separate questions.
Why it matters for dictation
Most dictation records only the speaker. A tool that turns your speech into text, while you are the only person in the room, is not recording anyone else's conversation. The consent question changes when the tool captures a call, a meeting or a room with other people in it.
Before you dictate or record a conversation with other people, check three things: which participants the recording tool captures, whether the tool is a participant or a third party, and whether your state's rule is one-party or all-party. A tool that transcribes a meeting it joined may be treated differently from one that only listens to you.
This page describes what the statutes say. It is not legal advice, and state law changes. For the stricter rule that needs every participant's agreement, see all-party consent.
Related terms
- All-party consent: the stricter rule, which needs every participant to agree.
- Dictation: speaking so that software writes the words as you say them, which records only the speaker.
Guides and questions that cover it
Evidence
Every number on this page, with where it comes from. Open a fact to see the exact words in its source.
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- 2.
Related terms
- Speech to Text Privacy: Where Your Voice GoesThe topic this term belongs to
- All-party consentAll-party consent is a recording rule under which every participant in a conversation must agree before it can be recorded or intercepted. California, Florida and Maryland use it in their statutes, and it is stricter than one-party consent.
- Attorney-client privilegeAttorney-client privilege protects confidential communications between a lawyer and their client about seeking legal advice or services. A third party who is present, or a tool that handles the conversation, can put that protection at risk.
- Biometric dataBiometric data is personal data produced by technical processing of a person's physical, physiological or behavioral characteristics that allows or confirms who that person is. A voice recording becomes biometric data when it is processed to identify the speaker.
- Business associate agreement (BAA)A business associate agreement (BAA) is the written contract that HIPAA requires before a covered entity lets a vendor create, receive, maintain or transmit protected health information on its behalf. Dictation tools used in clinics often need one, and a BAA alone does not make a product compliant.
- False accept (accidental activation)A false accept, also called a false wake or accidental activation, is when a voice assistant or dictation feature starts listening or recording although the wake word was not said. Smart speakers have been measured to wake by accident, and that can capture speech the user did not mean to share.
- Federated learningFederated learning is a way to train one machine learning model on data spread across many devices. Each device computes an update from its own data, and only those updates are sent to a server, so the raw data does not have to be collected in one place.
- On-device speech recognitionOn-device speech recognition converts speech to text with a model that runs on your own computer or phone, so the audio does not need to be sent to a server. It is also called local, offline or on-device dictation.
- Protected health information (PHI)Protected health information (PHI) is individually identifiable health information that HIPAA protects when it is held or sent in electronic or other form by a covered entity or its business associate. Patient names with diagnoses, in dictated notes or voice recordings, are PHI. It is also called ePHI when held electronically.
- Speaker verificationSpeaker verification is a voice biometric check in which a system accepts or rejects a claimed identity by comparing a voice with stored models of the person claimed. It is also called voice authentication, voice ID or voice biometrics.
- Special category data (GDPR)Special category data is the group of personal data that Article 9 of the GDPR bans organizations from processing unless a listed exception applies. It includes health data and biometric data used to identify a person, and a voice recording can fall into it when it is processed that way.
- Voice cloningVoice cloning is the use of a model trained on recordings of one person to generate new speech in that person's voice. Some products need only minutes of clear audio, and cloned voices have been used in fraud, so recordings of your voice carry a real risk.
- VoiceprintA voiceprint is a stored model of a person's voice, built from measurable features of their speech and used to recognize or verify that person. Illinois law lists voiceprints among biometric identifiers, and other vendors call the same idea a voice template or speaker model.
Pages that use this term
- Speech to Text Privacy: Where Your Voice GoesTopic
- Meeting Transcription: How It Works and What to UseGuide
- Is Dictation HIPAA Compliant? What Makes It SafeGuide
- Recording Consent Laws: One-Party vs All-Party StatesGuide
- Can you transcribe a Discord call or voice chat?Question
- Can you transcribe a meeting without a bot joining?Question
- Do patients have to consent to AI scribes?Question
- How do you transcribe a meeting on a Mac?Question
- Which states require all-party consent to record?Question
- All-party consentGlossary