Recording Law for Employers & Businesses in Vermont

Vermont has no state law that requires you to get everyone’s permission before recording an in-person conversation. Instead, federal wiretapping rules apply in two steps. First, the conversation must qualify as a protected "oral communication" under the federal Wiretap Act, which requires the speaker to have exhibited an expectation of privacy that the circumstances objectively justified. Second, once that threshold is met, the federal one-party-consent rule allows any participant to the conversation to record without telling the others, provided the recording complies with all applicable laws. This means your employee can record a customer’s spoken words while wearing smartglasses, without asking the customer first, provided the conversation occurs in a setting where the speaker’s expectation of privacy is reasonable and the recording is otherwise lawful. The same rule covers arguments, disputes, or service calls that happen in stores, parking lots, or on the street when the speaker’s privacy expectation is objectively justified. The key is that the employee must be part of the conversation being recorded. If an employee is not part of the conversation, federal law generally bars recording unless all parties consent, but that situation is rare in typical customer-service settings.

Recording inside someone’s home or private residence is treated differently. Vermont’s voyeurism law makes it a crime to secretly record or photograph anyone inside a home without their knowledge and consent. The law covers covert recording in any format, including audio-only devices, when the person being recorded is inside a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy within a home or residence. Even if the camera on the smartglasses is clearly visible, the law still requires that the person being recorded actually knows the device is on and agrees to be recorded. Silence, continued presence, or vague acknowledgment of the device’s presence does not meet this standard. If your employees might enter customers’ homes, require them to pause recording until they have clear, observable consent from everyone present.

There is no Vermont law that says you can’t record on-duty police officers in public. However, the Second Circuit—whose jurisdiction includes Vermont—has not squarely recognized a First Amendment right to record on-duty police, and only some non-binding district courts within the circuit have gone the other way. Because the law is unsettled, the safest approach is to stop audio recording if an officer tells your employee to stop or says the recording is unlawful. Do not resume audio capture during the same encounter until a lawyer reviews the situation. Non-audio notes or timestamps can still be kept. This is a risk-management step, not because the recording is illegal under wiretap rules, but because the constitutional right to continue recording has not been clearly recognized here.

Recording only video or photos without audio is generally unrestricted in Vermont. The voyeurism law only bans secretly recording or photographing someone’s intimate areas or recording inside a private home without consent. Ordinary video of a dispute, argument, or police interaction on a public street or in a store does not fall under that law, because the statute’s in-home/residence scope and intimate-area provisions are not triggered. No Vermont statute treats silent video differently from in-person observation. Just be careful not to record inside private homes or areas where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy without clear consent.

There is no Vermont law that forces you to tell customers they’re being recorded, but lying when directly asked can create ethical trouble under Vermont’s professional conduct rules for lawyers. If a customer directly asks whether the conversation is being recorded, train staff to answer honestly and, if asked, confirm that recording is taking place. This avoids disputes and keeps interactions professional.

Imagine a customer at a Vermont hardware store loudly arguing with an employee over a return policy. The employee is wearing smartglasses that capture both video and audio of the exchange. Under the federal Wiretap Act’s two-step analysis, the employee can record the conversation without telling the customer only if the conversation clears the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy threshold: the speaker must have exhibited an expectation of privacy that the circumstances objectively justified. If the argument moves into the employee break room, the employee should continue recording only if the conversation clears the federal Wiretap Act’s threshold and the recording complies with all applicable laws; the break room is not a home or residence, so the voyeurism statute’s in-home scope does not apply. If the customer later enters their private home to continue the dispute, the employee must stop recording entirely unless they get explicit, observable consent from everyone inside.

Vermont’s voyeurism statute carries criminal penalties for secretly recording inside a home or residence without knowledge and consent: a first offense is punishable by up to two years imprisonment and/or a $1,000 fine, while a second or subsequent offense can be punished by up to three years imprisonment and/or a $5,000 fine. Only a second or subsequent offense or a subsection (c) disclosure offense qualifies as a felony under Vermont law, since a first offense does not exceed the two-year maximum. Separately, State v. Geraw, 173 Vt. 350 (Vt. 2002), held that Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution bars police from secretly audio-recording a suspect’s statements inside the suspect’s own home during a consensual, invited interview, absent a warrant. This suppression ruling applies only to government actors and does not create a special rule benefiting a person recording inside their own home versus outside it.

Vermont’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, effective January 1, 2027, defines "biometric data" to include voiceprints and vocal biomarkers but applies only to covered minors and covered businesses meeting specific thresholds. It imposes design, transparency, and data-minimization duties rather than a consent-before-collection mandate for biometric identifiers. For ordinary smartglasses use in customer-service settings involving minors, the federal one-party-consent rule remains the operative standard for audio recording, provided the conversation clears the federal Wiretap Act’s reasonable-expectation-of-privacy threshold. No Vermont statute otherwise restricts recording interactions with minors in public or semi-public spaces.