Recording Law for Voiceprints & Biometric Data in Indiana

Indiana’s wiretap statute covers the interception of an "electronic communication" transmitted by wire, radio, or an electromagnetic system. A voiceprint extracted from a recorded call is not itself an intercepted transmission—it’s a derived template created after the call ends. Because the law’s definition of "interception" at Ind. Code § 35-31.5-2-176 means intentionally recording or acquiring the contents of such a communication by someone other than a sender or receiver without the sender or receiver’s consent, extracting a voiceprint from a stored recording does not trigger the wiretap statute. The Attorney General’s office enforces the state’s privacy law instead, which treats voiceprints as "sensitive data" requiring opt-in consent—but only if your company meets the law’s size thresholds.

Indiana has no law like Illinois’ BIPA. Instead, the Indiana Consumer Data Protection Act (INCDPA), effective January 1, 2026, defines "biometric data" to include voiceprints but explicitly excludes raw audio recordings. Only derived voiceprint templates count as biometric data under the INCDPA. The law only applies if your company processes personal data of at least 100,000 Indiana residents annually (or 25,000 with 50%+ revenue from data sales). If you meet those thresholds, you must get opt-in consent before processing voiceprints as "sensitive data." The Attorney General enforces this with a mandatory 30-day cure period and caps civil penalties at $7,500 per violation.

Indiana is a one-party consent state for electronic communications like phone calls, but its wiretap statute is narrowly scoped. It only regulates interception of communications transmitted by wire, radio, or electromagnetic systems—not ordinary in-person conversations or stored recordings. Indiana has no separate "eavesdropping" law that would require all-party consent for face-to-face talks. The state’s only camera-specific law (Ind. Code § 35-46-8.5-1) criminalizes unattended surveillance equipment on another person’s private property—it doesn’t restrict recording in your own home or with attended devices. Because the wiretap statute is limited to "electronic communications" transmitted by specified systems, it does not reach ordinary in-person conversations at all, regardless of whether they occur in public or private settings.

Under Indiana law, an "electronic communication" is defined at Ind. Code § 35-31.5-2-110 as any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, oral communication, digital information, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, a radio, or an electromagnetic, a photoelectronic, or a photo-optical system. "Interception" means at Ind. Code § 35-31.5-2-176 the intentional recording or acquisition of the contents of an electronic communication by a person other than a sender or receiver of that communication, without the consent of the sender or receiver. A voiceprint template derived from a recorded call is not an intercepted communication—it’s a post-transmission biometric identifier. The INCDPA excludes raw audio recordings from its definition of biometric data, so only the derived template is regulated.

Imagine a lawyer records a client call using live.law’s feature. The app extracts a voiceprint template to distinguish the client’s voice from others on the call. Under Indiana’s wiretap law, this extraction isn’t an interception because it happens after the call ends. But if the lawyer’s firm processes voiceprints for 150,000 Indiana residents annually, the Indiana Consumer Data Protection Act applies. The firm must get opt-in consent before creating or using the voiceprint template. Without consent, the Attorney General could pursue penalties after a 30-day cure period, but the firm isn’t violating the wiretap statute.

The INCDPA gives exclusive enforcement power to the Attorney General. Civil penalties are capped at $7,500 per violation, and the AG must give a 30-day written cure notice before suing. There’s no private right of action—only the AG can bring claims. Unlike laws like Illinois’ BIPA, there’s no statutory damages or per-violation penalty structure tied specifically to biometric data. The law treats voiceprints as one category of "sensitive data" requiring opt-in consent, but the penalties and enforcement structure apply equally to all sensitive data categories.

Indiana is in the Seventh Circuit, which recognizes a First Amendment right to record police performing their duties in public under ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012). Indiana’s wiretap statute does not reach open recording of in-person scenes, so bystanders may lawfully record police interactions in public without consent. However, Indiana enacted a 25-foot police "buffer law" (Ind. Code § 35-44.1-2-14) in 2023 that makes it a Class C misdemeanor to approach within 25 feet of an officer after being ordered to stop. That law was preliminarily enjoined on vagueness grounds in Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press v. Rokita, No. 24-2927 (7th Cir. Aug. 5, 2025), with the remand still pending as of spring 2026. A second buffer law (Ind. Code § 35-44.1-2-15, effective July 1, 2025) conditions a stop-approaching order on the officer’s reasonable belief the person’s presence will interfere with duties and is not covered by the injunction. Recording an on-duty officer from more than a purely arbitrary distance in public, without physically interfering, is on solid First Amendment/Alvarez footing, but the 25-foot statute remains nominally on the books while its enforceability is in active litigation.

The Indiana State Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee issued Opinion No. 1 of 2000, which takes a strict, per-se-unethical position on undisclosed recording of attorneys in pending legal matters. The opinion states it is unethical for an attorney to tape-record another attorney in a telephone conversation regarding legal matters without informing the other attorney, even though such recording is legal under Indiana’s one-party-consent wiretap law. The opinion characterizes undisclosed recording as fundamentally deceitful and dishonest, and it aligns with the pre-2001 ABA Formal Opinion 337 position that ABA 01-422 later abandoned nationally. The opinion is advisory and has not been superseded by later Indiana authority, so Indiana lawyers should treat undisclosed recording of other attorneys (and likely more broadly) as presumptively unethical professional misconduct under Indiana Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c).