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			Wiretapping  law
			Under federal  and state wiretapping laws, call centers who record will generally be protected from claims of wiretapping if they (1) notify their employees of, and - especially - obtain their employees' written consent to, recording  and (2) make an announcement at the beginning of each call that the call may be recorded or monitored. Wiretapping laws apply only if one or both parties on the call do not consent to monitoring or recording and consent can be obtained either explicitly - as in a signed consent from the employee  - or implicitly - as when an announcement if made regarding recording and the caller does not object. In most  states and under federal law, only one party on the call must give consent  to the recording, so an employee's consent is sufficient. That said, some  of the states that require both parties' consent include California, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylavania - among the largest states in the United States. Whether interstate calls must comply with individual state requirements  has never been definitively determined in the courts, so the the most  conservative approach is to comply with both federal and state laws. Most  corporations that record appear to rely on implied consent from the customer,  using the announcement approach. Federal  law prohibits the willful interception of telephone communication without an applicable exemption. There are two principal exceptions: Consent:  Under federal law, it is permissible to intercept and record a telephone  conversation if at least one of the parties to the call consents. "Business  telephone" exception: This exemption generally allows monitoring and recording of calls over an extension phone which is both provided by the telephone company and used by a subscriber in the ordinary course  of a company's business. This means that businesses can monitor the  conversatons of their employees, as long as they do so in the ordinary  course of business using equipment that is part of the telephone system. Our review of the literature suggests that this exception is limited  unless the recording equipment is provided by the telephone company  of is "part" of the telephone system. We don't recommend relying  on this exception for call center recording. All states also prohibit wiretapping. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia have statutes that require at least one party to consent to the monitoring  or recording of the call, while 11 states require that both parties give consent. At least one source we've reviewed claims that California recognizes  implied consent if there's an announcement of the recording at the beginning of the call and the other party has provided express consent. In our review  of the case law and the literature, we have not found a single case where  a call center using express consent by employees and implied consent for  customers (using the announcement approach) has been found to be wiretapping. The best source we found for state and federal recording laws is the website for  the Reporters Committee for the  Freedom of the Press. Although the focus of the site is recording  for journalistic purposes, the same basic legal issues apply. *Content from "Recording and Monitoring Call Center Transactions: A VoiceLog White Paper."
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