Recording consent & your legal obligations

Consent is required, not optional

Recording a conversation without the consent of everyone in it is illegal in many US states and creates data-protection liability for you in the UK. Before you record anyone other than yourself, you must notify them and obtain their consent. Overshow gives you the controls to do this — using them is your responsibility, and recording people without their consent is a misuse of the product. This page is informational, not legal advice; laws differ by country, state, industry, and contract, so check the rules that apply to you and your organisation.

You are always in control of what Overshow captures. pause and exclusions exist so you can align behaviour with the room you are in.

You must notify the people you record

You must tell everyone in a conversation that you are recording or capturing, before you start, and give them a genuine chance to refuse. This is not a courtesy — in all-party-consent jurisdictions it is the difference between lawful recording and a criminal offence, and in the UK it is what makes you a lawful data controller for the other people's personal data.

Honour requests to stop

If anyone withdraws consent or asks you to stop, you must pause Overshow immediately for that period. Consent can be withdrawn at any time. The same applies if a host sets expectations for a call (for example "this part is off the record"). Your controls are there so you can comply quickly.

Sensitive conversations

Consider pausing during medical, personal, HR, legally privileged, or otherwise sensitive discussions. even when no one has objected yet. Not everything that is lawful to capture is appropriate to capture without thought.

Meetings, calls, and customers

You must obtain consent before recording meetings or calls, and the requirement is strictest when they include customers, patients, employees, or regulated data. Follow the strongest applicable rule from:

• Your employment contract or handbook
• Customer or partner agreements
• Sector regulation (health, finance, education, and so on)

If you do not have clear consent, do not record — pause instead.

What the law requires of you

Overshow does not interpret the law for you, and it does not obtain consent on your behalf. You are responsible for complying with the rules below.

United States — all-party-consent states. Recording a conversation without the consent of everyone in it is a criminal offence in eleven-plus states, including California (Penal Code §632), Washington, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts. A call with one participant in an all-party-consent state can bring the whole call under that rule.

United States — federal baseline. The Federal Wiretap Act (18 U.S.C. §2511) requires at least one-party consent. Continuously capturing conversations you are not a participant in may have no lawful consent at all.

United Kingdom. Recording people makes you (or your employer) a UK GDPR data controller for their personal data. You need a lawful basis, you must give the other participants the transparency information required by Articles 13–14, and systematic monitoring (for example continuous capture in a workplace) generally requires a Data Protection Impact Assessment under Article 35. See the ICO's employment-monitoring guidance — persistent audio capture of workers is among the hardest practices to justify.

Employee monitoring notices. Several US states (including New York, Connecticut, and Delaware) require employers to give employees notice before electronic monitoring. Continuous capture of staff may trigger these.

Persistent audio capture is the riskiest mode. If you enable persistent audio capture, treat every conversation it captures as one you must have consent for. Do not treat persistent capture as equivalent to manual notes.

Related reading

• Capture controls. pause, resume, and exclusions
• Privacy overview. what stays on your device
• Trust centre. wider trust and policy context