Is it legal to record a meeting? Consent rules by country

The short answer

• Recording a meeting you are part of: generally allowed in one-party consent jurisdictions, which includes US federal law, most US states, and (for personal use) the UK and the Netherlands.
• Recording in an all-party consent state: everyone on the call needs to agree. Roughly a dozen US states work this way, California among them.
• Recording for a business: in the UK and EU, data-protection law applies on top. You need a lawful basis, you have to tell people, and you have to decide how long you keep the file.
• Secretly recording a conversation you are not part of: this is the case that is most often a criminal offence, in the US, the UK and the Netherlands alike.
• Publishing a recording: a different question from making it. Sharing or posting a recording generally needs the agreement of the people in it.

United States: one-party and all-party consent

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) puts US federal law in the one-party category: as long as one participant consents, and that participant can be you, the recording is lawful under federal law. States can be stricter, and about a dozen are. RCFP describes one-party consent as the minimum requirement across the country.

States that RCFP lists as primarily requiring all-party consent (often called "two-party consent") are California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. For Michigan the all-party rule applies at least to recordings made by someone who is not in the conversation.

A few states split the rule by medium. According to RCFP, Missouri and Oregon require all-party consent for in-person conversations but one party for phone calls, while Connecticut and Nevada do the reverse. Hawaii and Maine require all-party consent only in particularly private places.

These lists change as laws are amended and courts rule, and RCFP notes that many of the statutes are decades old and that case law is still developing. Treat the list as a starting point and check the current law for the state you care about.

Calls with people in different states

A video meeting often has participants in several states, and the law is not settled on whether the recorder's state or the recorded person's state applies. RCFP's advice is to assume the stricter law applies. In practice that means: if anyone on the call is in an all-party state, get everyone's consent.

United Kingdom

There are two sets of rules. The first is about interception. Section 3 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (the ground older guides refer to as RIPA) makes it an offence to intentionally intercept a communication in the course of its transmission without lawful authority. Recording a call you are a party to, for your own use, is generally not treated as interception; the overview on Wikipedia describes a party to a call as able to record it for their own use without telling the other side, while passing the contents to others is a different matter.

The second set is data protection, and it applies as soon as a business or organisation records. The ICO's guide to lawful basis says you need at least one lawful basis (consent is one of seven, legitimate interests is another) and that you must choose and document it before you start, not afterwards. Consent is not automatically the right basis for a workplace meeting; many organisations rely on legitimate interests and tell people instead.

On meetings specifically, the ICO's data-sharing advice says you can record where you have a valid purpose that can't be achieved with less intrusive methods, that before recording you should tell people why you're recording, what you'll use it for and how long you'll keep it, and that you shouldn't usually post recordings online without the permission of the people in them.

European Union

A recording of a meeting contains personal data (voices, names, what people said), so the GDPR applies when a business or organisation makes one. Two articles do most of the work.

Article 6 lists six lawful bases for processing: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task and legitimate interests. You need one of them before you record. For an internal team meeting, legitimate interests is a common choice; consent is harder to rely on at work because it has to be freely given and can be withdrawn.

Article 13 says that when you collect personal data from someone you must tell them, at the time, who you are, why you are processing the data and on what basis, who will receive it, how long you will keep it, and what rights they have. For a meeting, that is the recording notice: who is recording, why, where the file goes, and when it is deleted.

Member states add their own rules on top (the Netherlands is below), so the GDPR is the floor, not the whole picture.

The Netherlands

The Dutch Criminal Code draws the line at participation. Article 139a makes it an offence to use a technical device to record a conversation held in a home, enclosed room or yard when you are not a participant in that conversation and are not acting on a participant's behalf. Article 139c covers tapping or recording telecommunications data that is not intended for you. A participant recording their own conversation falls outside both, which is why Dutch guidance generally says you may record a conversation you take part in.

The Dutch government's own example is a medical appointment: Rijksoverheid says you may record the conversation with your doctor to listen to again at home, that asking first is not required but is polite, and that the recording is for yourself only. Sharing it or making it public needs the doctor's agreement. The same logic (making is one thing, publishing another) is the usual reading for meetings.

A 2018 case from the Rechtbank Midden-Nederland shows the other side of the line: a journalist who recorded a phone call between two other people was found to have committed an offence, because people on a call can in principle trust that it is not being recorded by third parties.

For businesses, the GDPR rules above apply in the Netherlands as everywhere in the EU. Our Dutch guide Mag je een vergadering opnemen? covers the works-council and employer side.

What consent looks like in a meeting

None of the rules above require a signed form for an ordinary meeting. What they do require is that people know. Three habits cover almost every case:

• A line at the start: "I'm recording this so I can write up the notes. The recording stays with me and I'll delete it once the notes are done. Say so if you'd rather I didn't." Then wait for a reply.
• A note in the calendar invite: one sentence saying the meeting will be recorded and why. This gives people the chance to object before they join, which matters for external guests and for all-party states.
• The platform's own notice: when you use Zoom, Meet or Teams recording, the platform tells participants. Keep that on; it is the simplest evidence that people knew.

If someone objects, stop. Take notes by hand for that meeting. A recording made over an objection is the one most likely to cause trouble later, whatever the local rule.

Built-in recording versus a local recorder

The three big platforms all notify participants when their own recording starts. Zoom asks participants to consent: they click OK to continue or Leave to exit, and anyone joining a meeting that is already being recorded gets the same prompt. Google Meet says participants get a notification when the recording starts or stops. Microsoft Teams says everyone is notified automatically, and adds that depending on your region you may need everyone's permission before you can record them.

A local recorder is different. QuietNote captures your microphone and your Mac's own audio from your computer, next to the meeting app. Nothing joins the call, no bot appears in the participant list, and the platform shows no recording notice, because as far as Zoom, Meet or Teams are concerned nothing is being recorded. That is the point of a bot-free recorder, and it is also the honest trade-off: the responsibility to tell people is entirely yours. Nothing records until you press Start, so the moment to say "I'm recording this" is right before you do.

If you would rather have the platform do the telling, use its built-in recording and read our guides on recording a Google Meet, recording a Zoom meeting and recording a Microsoft Teams meeting. If you are the one trying to keep note-taking bots out of your meetings, see how to remove AI meeting bots.

Recording meetings at work

Employers usually have a say over and above the law. Many have a policy on recording meetings, sometimes in the staff handbook, sometimes in an IT or data-protection policy, and in some countries the works council has to approve monitoring arrangements. Check before you make recording a habit, especially for one-to-ones, performance conversations and anything involving clients.

The ICO's workplace guidance treats audio as more intrusive than other monitoring and expects a stronger justification for it. The same instinct serves well anywhere: record the meetings that need a record (decisions, interviews, client calls where everyone agrees) and skip the rest.

After the meeting: keeping, sharing and deleting

• Retention: decide up front how long you keep the audio. A common pattern is to keep the transcript or notes and delete the recording once they are written. Tell people the period when you announce the recording; the ICO and GDPR Article 13 both expect it.
• Access: a recording of a meeting is personal data of everyone in it. Keep it where only the people who need it can open it, and do not forward it casually.
• Sharing and publishing: making a recording and publishing it are separate acts. Posting a clip, sending it to someone outside the meeting or using it in a dispute generally needs the agreement of the people in it, and in the Netherlands the government guidance says so explicitly.
• Requests: people can ask what you hold about them. If a recording exists, you may have to provide it, so do not keep recordings you have no reason to keep.
• Deleting: with a local recorder the file is on your disk. With QuietNote the recording and the Markdown transcript sit in a folder you choose, so deleting is a matter of removing the file; there is no account or server copy.