Recording of Telephone Calls.

Arnaudo, Peter (Peter.Arnaudo@ag.gov.au)
Thu, 1 Oct 1998 17:17:29 +1000

You may be interested in an article on this topic, published in a recent
issue of the Telecommunication Journal of Australia (Vol 48 No 2 - 1998).
It is at page 75 and is entitled Who's Listening? - Recording and Monitoring
of Personal and Business Communications.

Unfortunately, the particular issue does not appear on the web site
(http://www.tsa.org.au/) for the Telecommunication Society of Australia
(which publishes the Journal).

Peter Arnaudo
Government Lawyer
Information Law Branch
Commonwealth Attorney-General's

> ----------
> From: Justin Sullivan
> Sent: Thursday, 1 October 1998 11:20 AM
> To: link@www.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: Recording of Telephone Calls.
>
> At 09:29 1/10/98 +1000, you wrote:
> >However, I've since been told by an equally prominent lawyer that this is
> >wrong under the (newer?) existing act. The shift seems to have been
> from
> the
> >protection of privacy, just to the mechanical fact of recording a
> conversation
> >without the other party being informed.
>
> I think there may be a different interpretation of the law depending on
> how
> the conversation was in fact recorded.
>
> IANAL, so seek your own advice etc, but my understanding is recording
> directly from the phone (e.g. attached suction cap, electronic device
> directly connected to the phone line) may not be legal without informing
> the other party. However I believe if you have some sort of ambient
> recording in the room, and happen to be using speaker phone at the time,
> this is acceptable (even if the remote party is recorded too).
>
> It would be nice to get some confirmation of this from anyone who *is* in
> fact a lawyer :-)
>
> JS
>
> --
> Justin Sullivan JP AIMM SIA(Aff.) Vmail/Fax (02) 9948 8449
> Australasian Manager, DIALix Pty Ltd <http://www.dialix.com.au/>
> Managing Director, JustNet Pty Ltd <http://www.justnet.com.au/>
>