Recording Law for Employers & Businesses in New York

New York lets you record any conversation you are part of without telling the other person or people. This is called a one-party consent rule. It applies whether the conversation is in person, over the phone, or by electronic message. The rule comes from New York Penal Law §250.00, which separately defines three offenses—wiretapping, mechanical overhearing of a conversation, and intercepting electronic communications—each of which is structured in a way that permits one-party consent. If you are wearing the smartglasses and having the conversation yourself, you are a participant, so you do not need anyone’s consent. The same rule covers phone calls and electronic messages because the statute treats all three the same way. The only exception is a narrow telemarketing rule that requires businesses to tell consumers they are being recorded on outbound sales calls, but that does not affect ordinary workplace or customer-service recordings.

You can silently record video anywhere in New York without breaking the wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, but the reasoning is more nuanced than a blanket claim that all three §250.00 offense-definitions are aural-only. New York Penal Law §250.00(1) ‘wiretapping’ covers only ‘telephonic or telegraphic communication,’ which is itself defined as an ‘aural transfer’ over wire or cable, so it cannot reach filming a scene. §250.00(2) ‘mechanical overhearing of a conversation’ covers only a ‘conversation or discussion’—an inherently verbal exchange—so a silent visual recording is not ‘overheard’ within that provision’s meaning. §250.00(6) (‘intercepting or accessing of an electronic communication’) is not implicated in the ordinary scenario because there is no electronic communication being intercepted when someone films a live scene with their own camera; however, this provision is NOT itself aural-only. §250.00(5) defines ‘electronic communication’ broadly as ‘any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence,’ expressly including images, with no voice/aural requirement. So if smartglasses instead silently intercepted someone else’s already-existing electronic video transmission (for example, a live video call), §250.00(6) could apply even without audio—a narrow edge case distinct from a wearer’s own ambient camera capture. New York also has separate, narrow video-specific criminal statutes—the ‘unlawful surveillance’ provisions at Penal Law §§250.40–250.65, e.g. §250.45 (Unlawful Surveillance in the Second Degree, a class E felony)—but these reach only surreptitious recording of a person’s undressing, intimate body parts, or sexual conduct, in a place carrying a reasonable expectation of privacy (bedrooms, bathrooms, hotel rooms, under clothing), done for sexual gratification, profit, degradation, or similar purposes; they do not reach ordinary silent video of a public scene, dispute, or police interaction.

New York’s Civil Rights Law §79-p gives you the right to record on-duty police officers performing their duties in public. If you are wearing smartglasses and record an officer on a public street or in a public park, the law protects you from interference. However, a June 2026 New York Court of Appeals decision in Reyes v. City of New York held that neither §79-p nor the parallel New York City law (N.Y.C. Admin. Code §14-189) protects recording law-enforcement activity inside a police stationhouse, including its publicly accessible lobby, where the NYPD maintains a contrary no-recording policy. Because that decision is recent and the underlying court opinion was not fully accessible during verification, treat indoor station areas as off-limits for automatic recording; require attorney review before capturing there. Outside those controlled areas, public recording remains protected.

New York City has a local law that requires certain businesses to post a sign if they collect or store customers’ biometric identifier information, which includes voiceprints. The sign must be near every customer entrance and say in plain language that biometric identifier information is being collected, retained, converted, stored, or shared. The law does not require written consent—just the sign. It also bans selling or profiting from customers’ biometric data. This rule only applies to brick-and-mortar retail stores, food-and-drink establishments, and entertainment venues that collect biometrics from customers at physical entrances. It is unclear whether it reaches a tech company that captures its own app users’ voiceprints for an enrollment feature. Until courts decide that, assume the signage requirement does not apply to software-only voiceprint capture. Separately, a statewide bill that would require a written release before collecting biometric identifiers (including voiceprints) passed the New York State Senate on June 3, 2026, but remains pending in the Assembly and is not yet law.

Recording a conversation you are not part of without at least one participant’s consent can violate New York Penal Law §250.00, and a violation is punishable as a Class E felony. There is no private right of action under the wiretapping statute itself, but other laws could still lead to lawsuits. The risk is highest when a non-participant records a private conversation in a place where people reasonably expect privacy, like a private home or a closed office. If you are the one having the conversation, your risk is very low because you are a participant. Still, always consider your workplace policy and customer expectations before recording.

Imagine you run a hardware store in Manhattan and want staff to wear smartglasses that can record audio and video while assisting customers. Under New York’s one-party consent rule, staff can record conversations they are part of without telling customers. You do not need to post a sign for voiceprints unless your glasses also create voiceprints for New York City customers in a covered retail space, and even then the signage requirement applies only to brick-and-mortar retail establishments that collect biometrics from customers at physical entrances. You should, however, train staff to avoid recording inside a police stationhouse or lobby, because a recent court decision suggests protection does not apply there. For silent video of customer disputes in the aisles, the recording is unrestricted. Make sure your policy also complies with any federal or local rules that apply to your industry.

New York’s one-party consent rule applies uniformly regardless of location, so a participant may record their own conversation at home or in another private space without consent. Courts have, however, read a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy gloss into the statute for bystanders recording others’ conversations in private homes, making such recordings riskier than in public. Separately, New York recognizes a ‘vicarious consent’ doctrine allowing a parent or guardian to consent on behalf of a minor child when the parent has a good-faith, objectively reasonable basis to believe recording is necessary for the child’s welfare; this doctrine often arises in home or family contexts but is status-based (parent-of-minor), not a location-specific rule.

New York’s ethics rules for lawyers are split. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (NYC Bar) has issued Formal Opinion 2003-02 (2003), reaffirmed in 2025, adopting a middle-ground standard: a lawyer may tape a conversation without disclosure only if the lawyer has a reasonable basis for believing that disclosure would significantly impair pursuit of a generally accepted societal good, such as investigating ongoing criminal conduct, threats against attorneys or clients, or exposing witness perjury; merely wanting an accurate record does not qualify. The NYC Bar expressly rejected the ABA’s broader permissive rule and treats undisclosed recording of clients or judicial officers as permissible only in ‘few and far between’ circumstances. By contrast, the New York State Bar Association’s earlier opinions took a more restrictive or balancing view, and the New York County Lawyers Association once took a more permissive position close to the ABA’s rule. No New York court has squarely resolved the issue, and New York ethics authorities treat the state’s one-party wiretap law as a threshold floor, not a safe harbor for discipline purposes.