Is it legal to record a meeting in Latvia?

Krimināllikums Section 144, on the confidentiality of correspondence and of information transmitted over electronic communications networks. In the official English: "(1) For a person who commits intentional violation of the confidentiality of personal correspondence … (2) For a person who commits unlawful interception of publicly unavailable data transmissions or signals in telecommunications networks, as well as unlawful acquisition of publicly unavailable electromagnetic data from a telecommunications network in which such data is present …"

The finding here is partly negative, and we want to be clear that it is. The official English of the whole Criminal Law was searched for provisions on eavesdropping, recording, private life and surveillance, and none was found that criminalises recording a conversation one takes part in. The nearest neighbours are Section 132¹ on persecution, which covers repeated tracking and surveillance coupled with threats or unsolicited contact, and Section 200 on commercial secrets.

So the framing is the confidentiality of correspondence and of network transmissions. Neither is about a participant's own record of a conversation.

Yes as far as the criminal code goes. Section 144(1) is about correspondence. Section 144(2) is about intercepting transmissions or signals in a telecommunications network, and a participant whose own device captures its own audio output locally is not intercepting the network. That reading comes from the statutory text, with no Latvian case law opened.

But Latvia is the one country here where a data protection breach is itself a crime. Section 145, illegal activities involving personal data: "(1) For illegal activities involving personal data of a natural person, if substantial harm has been caused thereby, the applicable punishment is the deprivation of liberty for a period of up to two years or temporary deprivation of liberty, or probationary supervision, or community service, or fine. (2) … if they have been performed by a personal data processing administrator or operator for the purpose of vengeance, acquisition of property or blackmail, [up to four years]."

So the GDPR analysis in Latvia has a criminal tail: unlawful processing that causes substantial harm is prosecutable. The substantial-harm threshold is what keeps an ordinary announced meeting transcript far away from it, and the exposure lives in misuse and disclosure rather than in recording. How Latvian practice reads substantial harm is not something we can tell you.

Nothing in Latvian criminal law requires you to say anything as a participant. GDPR does, and it wants the information before the substance of the meeting rather than after it.

Quick note before we start: I'm recording this so I can write my notes up afterwards. It transcribes on my laptop, nothing goes to the cloud, and I only keep the text. Say so now if you'd rather I didn't.

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

No Latvian authority was found on audio recording at all, so nothing on express versus implied consent, and nothing on the calendar-invite form.

GDPR applies as well, and the analysis is the ordinary European one: a meeting recording is personal data about every identifiable speaker, a transcript without speaker labels is still personal data, the household exemption is read narrowly and a work meeting has a direct connection to a professional activity, you need a lawful basis, and Art. 13 wants the information at the time the data are obtained, which for an always-on recorder means before the substance of the meeting. The European framework covers all of that once rather than on every country page.

Latvia's employee-side counterparties are trade unions and employee representatives under the Labour Law, with information and consultation rights. We did not verify that, so it should not be treated as a rule without a citation.

DVI publishes sectoral guidance, and video surveillance has its own. Its guidance index lists nothing on audio recording and nothing dedicated to employee monitoring, which we checked rather than assumed.

Datu valsts inspekcija, DVI. In one line: nothing found on audio recording. The published guidance covers video surveillance, data processing in business operations, DPIAs, international transfers, elections and cookies.

Because the binding layer in Latvia is data protection rather than criminal law, this is where the product's architecture does real work. Transcription runs on your own device, the audio is never written to disk, and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no cloud component, so on our reading we are not a processor under Art. 4(8), which processes personal data on behalf of a controller and presupposes receiving it. That means no Art. 28 data processing agreement to sign with us, no sub-processor list, no international transfer and no transfer impact assessment, because there is no transfer. We found no decision squarely holding that an on-device-only vendor is not a processor, so that is reasoning you can check rather than a settled point.

What it does not do is disclose anything. There is no bot in the participant list and no banner on anyone else's screen, so the transparency obligation rests entirely on you saying something. Earkeep does not make anyone compliant and could not: a tool cannot be compliant, only a processing operation can be lawful.

Where it helps in the room is that stopping is real and checkable. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your 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. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged from the file on your own disk, with no server copy anywhere to reconcile against.

• The Criminal Law, official English (Sections 144, 145)
• Krimināllikums, Latvian original
• DVI guidance index
• GDPR, EUR-Lex

• European recording laws: the four layers, the controller question, and all 32 countries.
• 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 provisions and guidance rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.