recording phone calls
Topic: Surveillance. Activity pages act as clean lookup hubs rather than a second content source.
Activity overview
What this hub is for
This activity currently has 24 starter country rows in the reset dataset. The current sample leans toward restricted outcomes, which is enough to test browse flows without pretending the dataset is complete.
Starter comparison cards
These show the countries currently mapped for this activity in the reset dataset.
Austria
Austria’s criminal-law rule on recording non-public speech can apply to call recording, so there is no clean national yes or no without checking consent and legal authority.
Belgium
Belgium's data protection authority says it is in principle prohibited to record electronic conversations, including professional phone conversations, unless a recognized exception applies.
Canada
Recording a phone call in Canada is not a flat yes or no because a private communication cannot be knowingly intercepted unless one of the parties consents or another legal exception applies.
Denmark
Official Danish sources say business call recording is governed by the general data-protection rules, and secret listening to or recording telephone calls between other people is prohibited.
Finland
Finland’s data-protection authority says private individuals may record phone calls where they are themselves the caller or recipient, while organisations need a lawful basis. The answer therefore depends on who is recording and why.
France
Call recording is not flatly banned but the CNIL says people generally need to be informed and workplace recording must be justified proportionate and not continuous.
Germany
Phone calls in Germany are generally treated as non public spoken communication so recording them without authorization is a criminal offence.
Hong Kong
Official Hong Kong guidance allows telephone monitoring where justified, but the personal data collected must be controlled and, where employee-public calls are recorded, callers should generally be told by a pre-recorded message that the call may be recorded and the purposes of the recording.
All current country rows
The table remains useful for auditing coverage and row state while the data is still sparse.
| Country | Status | Row state |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Unclear | verified |
| Austria | Depends | verified |
| Belgium | Depends | verified |
| Canada | Depends | verified |
| Denmark | Depends | verified |
| Finland | Depends | verified |
| France | Depends | verified |
| Germany | Depends | verified |
| Hong Kong | Depends | verified |
| Iceland | Depends | verified |
| India | Depends | verified |
| Japan | Unclear | verified |
| Luxembourg | Depends | verified |
| New Zealand | Depends | verified |
| Oman | Depends | verified |
| Philippines | Depends | verified |
| Poland | Unclear | verified |
| Portugal | Depends | verified |
| Singapore | Depends | verified |
| South Africa | Depends | verified |
| South Korea | Depends | verified |
| Switzerland | Depends | verified |
| United Kingdom | Unclear | verified |
| United States | Depends | verified |