Is Florida a two-party consent state?

Fla. Stat. § 934.03 prohibits intercepting wire, oral or electronic communications, which means in-person conversation is squarely covered rather than only calls. The consent exception is at § 934.03(2)(d), and it requires the prior consent of all parties.

The limiting element sits in the definitions at § 934.02: an "oral communication" is one uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that it is not subject to interception, under circumstances justifying that expectation. Consent is therefore not required for something spoken with no reasonable expectation of privacy, and public meetings are excluded. A private meeting, a one-to-one, an internal review: all inside.

Note what the statute asks for. Several all-party states are satisfied by notice; Florida's text asks for consent, and it asks for it in advance. We found no Florida case applying that wording to announced-recording facts, so how much daylight there is between "I told them and they carried on" and "they consented" is not settled here the way it is in California.

A violation of § 934.03 is a third-degree felony under § 934.03(4)(a), reported as up to five years and $5,000. That grading is the reason Florida is worth reading carefully even though its rule is the same shape as several other states'.

Sources disagree on the first-offence exception, and the disagreement matters. RCFP describes a general first-offence reduction to a misdemeanour where there is no illegal purpose or commercial gain. The statutory text at § 934.03(4)(b) confines that reduction to unencrypted radio communications not involving cellular, cordless or paging service. On the statute's own text the exception would not reach an ordinary recorded call or meeting at all. We report both and would plan around the text.

Civilly, § 934.10 creates a private right of action. RCFP words the measure as actual damages up to $1,000 for each day of violation plus punitive damages, fees and costs, which differs from the usual federal-model formula, so treat the dollar mechanics as unverified.

Florida is the clearest example anywhere of this question being genuinely unresolved, and it has a live intra-state split rather than a single answer.

Koch v. Kimball, 710 So. 2d 5 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998), held Florida had personal jurisdiction over a Georgia employee who recorded a call to her supervisor in Tampa, reasoning that the interception occurs where the communication originates, not where it is heard. The Second District then overruled Koch en banc in Kountze v. Kountze, 996 So. 2d 246 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008), on concerns about Florida asserting its police powers over people in other states. But the Florida Supreme Court had approved Koch in a footnote in Acquadro v. Bergeron (Fla. 2003), so in France v. France (Fla. 5th DCA 2012) the Fifth District held itself bound by Koch, reached the opposite result from Kountze, and certified conflict.

So a Florida participant on an out-of-state call, or an out-of-state participant on a call with someone in Florida, is in genuinely uncertain territory. The general problem is on the US overview, and the conservative posture is the same everywhere: tell everyone and get their agreement.

Because Florida asks for prior consent rather than for notice, ask a question and wait for the answer. Silence is a weaker thing to rely on here than in a state whose statute is satisfied by informing people.

Before we start: I'm recording and transcribing this meeting so I have accurate notes. It runs on my own laptop and nothing is uploaded. Is everyone okay with that? If anyone would rather I didn't, say so now and I'll turn it off.

Then leave a beat, and note who was present. Longer and shorter versions 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 state where the failure to ask is a felony, that means the whole obligation is on you saying something, and the app will not help you remember.

What it gives you is somewhere to go when the answer is no. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so the operating system's own recording indicator goes dark in front of the person who asked. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record for good. 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 disk and nothing is written in their place, and there is no server copy to reconcile against because there is no server. The one caveat is that it is not recoverable either.

None of that makes a recording lawful in Florida, and the fact that audio is transcribed on your own device and never written to disk is not an answer to § 934.03. Consent law is about the recording, not about where it ends up.

• Fla. Stat. § 934.03, official text.
• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Florida.
• MWL, Laws on Recording Conversations in All 50 States, on the choice-of-law cases. Last updated February 2022.

• 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.
• Always-on capture: why there is no record button, and how the controls fit around it.

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.