Recording
I’ve been working out how to record a telephone call from our voice modem today. It’s surprisingly complicated, because the modem only has a mic in and a line out, and, rather sensibly, the line out does not feed the voice from the microphone back at you when you’re making a call.
Coming to the solution was rather like the puzzle where you have gas, electricity and water, and three houses to link up to each with lines or pipes which mustn’t cross. Except, in this case, house A will only accept a 3.5mm mono input, house B has two phono connectors and house C needs a funny little adapter which no-one sells.
However, with a small amount of component-buying and soldering, the problem will shortly be solved.
Now I simply need some people worth ‘phoning and recording…
December 12th, 2004 at 10:43
I’m sure you know this already… but I’m going to say it, recording telephone calls without telling the people on the other side is illegal… well… someone had to say it.
B
December 12th, 2004 at 10:47
Only if you then subsequently fail to tell them, surely?
Dead Ringers do this kind of thing all the time, and then say “ha ha, we were only kidding, do you mind if we broadcast this?”
One wonders how many of the victims are sufficiently embarassed to say “no”…
December 12th, 2004 at 16:53
Quite possibly, but as far as I recall (and I’m sure one of the people out there who read this will be able to go into more detail about which law it is that applies), you must obtain the permission of both parties in order to make and/or use recorded telephone calls. I do believe though that it’s reccomended practice to tell the person before you engage in the *actual* call (hence banks and such people saying “Calls may be recorded for training purposes” and so forth).
In the case of Dead Ringers, it would kind of loose the effect they’re going for if they asked beforehand.
B
December 12th, 2004 at 17:43
My thoughts exactly!
I wonder if a bank have to tell you that your call was recorded, having stipulated that it may be, if it was?
December 14th, 2004 at 21:46
I think they just take it as read that you’re aware the call may be recorded, and then don’t tell you either way; if they then said “By the way, that was one we recorded,” there’s a large chance the caller’s going to say “Stuff that, I refuse permission,” which would (I assume) rather nadger their training program. If they just tell people at the start, they can use whatever calls they like and say “Well, we did warn them,” in case anyone asks awkward questions…
…Isn’t the DPA lovely?
December 14th, 2004 at 21:58
First off, is DPA “Data Protection Act”? I couldn’t work it out, and Googling proved nearly futile, since TLAs are thick on the ground in vast numbers of obscure computing applications… Use the acronym tag!
And secondly, what are the legal implications of recording a call that they’ve warned you they might record?! Presumably bad, since they won’t expect you to be recording it… But hmmm…