Is Colorado a one-party consent state?

C.R.S. § 18-9-303 handles wiretapping of telephone, telegraph and electronic communications, requiring the consent of "either a sender or a receiver". § 18-9-304 handles in-person eavesdropping, requiring the consent of "at least one of the principal parties" and reaching only a person "not visibly present". A participant sitting at the table is neither the eavesdropper the second provision describes nor short of the consent the first one wants.

RCFP states the eavesdropping law applies only where the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so the in-person branch carries a privacy element.

§ 18-9-305 carries a media carve-out for a news agency using the accepted tools of its medium while reporting a public and newsworthy event.

The sources disagree, and we are not resolving it here. RCFP describes wiretapping as a felony carrying $1,000 to $100,000 and one to two years, with cordless-phone recording and eavesdropping as misdemeanors. FindLaw's current text of both sections says flatly that wiretapping and eavesdropping are each a class 2 misdemeanor.

The legislative history corroborates FindLaw. § 18-9-303 was a class 6 felony until SB21-271, effective 1 March 2022, and HB23-1293, effective 1 October 2023, made wiretapping a class 2 misdemeanor regardless of phone type, now carrying up to 120 days and $750. The likely explanation is that RCFP's figure predates the reclassification. We did not open the official revisor's text, so verify the number before relying on it.

On the civil side, no private right of action was found attached to §§ 18-9-303 or 18-9-304. RCFP's civil figures of $500 per damaged recording under § 13-21-128 belong to Colorado's police-recording statute, and should not be presented as eavesdropping damages.

Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for Colorado. It does not answer it for whoever is on the other end. No rule settles which state's law applies when the participants are in different places, more than one may apply at once, and courts have reached opposite results on comparable facts. If anyone on the call might be in an all-party state, the safe posture is theirs rather than yours. The general problem is on the US overview.

Nothing in Colorado law requires you to say anything, which is a different thing from it being a good idea. The reason to announce it anyway is the person on the other end of the call, who may be somewhere stricter, and the reason to ask rather than tell is that it puts an answer on the record instead of an assumption.

I'm recording this for notes, stored on my machine only. Any objection?

Then leave a beat. Longer versions, and what to do when someone says no, are on telling people you're recording.

Earkeep records continuously and announces itself to nobody: no bot in the participant list, no banner on anyone else's screen. In a one-party state that is legally unremarkable, and it is still the reason nobody in the room knows unless you say so.

The controls exist for when somebody would rather you didn't. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark and the person who asked can watch it happen rather than take your word for it. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged: the lines come out of the file on your own disk and nothing is written in their place, with no server copy to reconcile against because there is no server.

None of that makes a recording lawful anywhere, and the audio never leaving your device is not an answer to a consent statute. It is a good answer to "where does this go", which is usually the question the room actually has.

• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Colorado
• C.R.S. § 18-9-303
• C.R.S. § 18-9-304
• SB21-271
• C.R.S. § 18-9-303 (public.law)

• US recording laws, state by state: the federal baseline, the cross-border problem, and all 51 jurisdictions.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises statutes and cases rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.