Is Iowa a one-party consent state?

Iowa Code § 808B.2(2)(c), from the official text, makes it lawful for a person not acting under colour of law to intercept where "the person is a party to the communication or if one of the parties … has given prior consent to the interception, unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act … or for the purpose of committing any other injurious act".

Wire, oral and electronic are all covered, so in-person is inside. The injurious-purpose clause is the part to notice: one-party consent does not protect a recording made for an injurious purpose, which is broader than the federal criminal-or-tortious limit and correspondingly harder to be sure you are outside.

RCFP states the chapter reaches only communications carrying a reasonable expectation of privacy. That could not be corroborated from § 808B.1 directly, so treat it as single-sourced.

A Class D felony under § 808B.2(1), confirmed in the official text. RCFP gives up to five years and a $750 to $7,500 fine. Eavesdropping under § 727.8 is a serious misdemeanor at up to a year and $315 to $1,875; hidden cameras under § 709.21 an aggravated misdemeanor at up to two years and $650 to $6,250.

Civilly, RCFP cites § 808B.8 for actual damages, $100 per day or $1,000 whichever is greater, plus punitive damages and fees. Single-sourced.

Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for Iowa. 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 Iowa 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: Iowa
• Iowa Code § 808B.2 (official)

• 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.