Ban on recording without consent is unconstitutional, US court rules

And while it might feel counterintuitive how obvious a good idea it is, it becomes a lot more intuitive when you consider the contrary implications. You can not only be a party to something without being able to demonstrate what you observed, but you can be a party to something where any convincing accusation about your own involvement is equally compelling to your own recount by default. Even if you don’t realize you’re a party to anything in particular.

Being able to record your own experience is a matter of basic autonomy and self defense. Being denied it is a gift to anyone with the power or motivation to exploit that.

Edit: I didn’t even look at who was involved in the case. I am not remotely surprised to find the ruling favors political opponents, and I’m not swayed by that either. If anything, it’s better for everyone if PV has to play by the same rules as anyone they’re interacting with.

In general, SCOTUS wouldn't tend to pick this up unless another circuit has ruled the other way (in which case, yeah, they generally would to prevent unequal application of the law in different states).

>Banning recording private conversations without consent by one of the conversation members was always weird to me because of the “chilling effect” it has in people’s minds about recording perfectly legal things, or potential criminal behavior

I've never liked or thought 2-party consent requirements made sense because it felt like an extremely overly broad restriction on our own potential memories, discrimination based on mental ability, and with negative implication for future prosthetics. Like, why should someone with a photographic memory inherently have a right to have better recollection of their own personal interactions then someone with memory loss problems who wants to use a life log so they can go back over the day later? What about future implants and such? I'd much prefer if the law was more fine grained and focused on the negative edges. Like, perhaps consent would be required for sharing with the general public in cases not of public interest (in the legally defined sense), or that if one wanted to share any snippets the other party could demand the complete recording be shared as well. Or there could be technical requirements, like all future recording hardware must time stamp and cryptographically sign each frame so that any alteration is trivial to detect. Basically go after worries of "cherry picking" specifically. There could be specific protections for highly sensitive conversations like medical, or to address power imbalances (clients/customers/patients vs service providers).

But giving any party to a conversation a total universal veto over anyone else having a personal record by default never felt right and I'm glad I don't live in one of those states. After all, everyone can (and does!) demand NDAs or the like as they wish.

I'd forgotten that Federal law's 1 party consent is as extensive as it is, & hadn't included that above. That is an important consideration.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about states creating their own privacy laws. Part of me agrees, that 1 party consent is probably all that's required, and to do more creates a danger that criminal activity can use the law to protect itself.

Oregon did exempt two specific classes of speech: any speech talking about a felony that endangers human life, and any speech by police officers. This gives the public some right to 1 party record really bad things.

What's so weird here is that the court used those exemptions to strike down the entire law. They said that since the law discriminates, since these people aren't protected, it jeopardizes their right to speech. And they used that to invalidate all of the state's attempt to create additional privacy for citizens. I'm not sure how I feel on 2 party consent entirely, but this seemed like an attempt to create a somewhat balanced, privacy-sensitive approach, and seeing it taken down like this makes me feel embarrassed for the courts, that the federal courts would so brazenly & broadly undo the state legislature. I'm undecided about 2 part consent, but this feels like a vicious stroke by the courts.

I use android and I can record my phone calls. So....