Is Montana a two-party consent state?

§ 45-8-213(1)(c) forbids recording a conversation "by use of a hidden electronic or mechanical device that reproduces a human conversation without the knowledge of all parties to the conversation". Both in-person and telephone are reached, and RCFP reads subsections (3) and (4) as extending to the transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence of any nature, which covers texts and email.

No expectation-of-privacy element appears in the prohibition. The operative words are "hidden" and "without the knowledge of all parties", so a device that is not hidden is outside the prohibition on its face, before consent is reached at all.

The exceptions name the mechanism directly: "persons given warning of the transcription or recording. If one person provides the warning, either party may record." So an audible statement at or before the start satisfies the statute, no acknowledgement is required, and either participant may then record for the duration. Other exceptions cover public officials performing official duties, persons speaking at public meetings, and health care facilities recording emergency calls.

No authority was found on whether a beep or a written invite notice counts as a warning, so treat those as unresolved.

A misdemeanor. A first offence carries a fine not exceeding $500, or up to six months in county jail, or both, under § 45-8-213(4). Subsequent violations of (1)(a) or (1)(b) carry up to a year or $1,000, and a third or subsequent conviction up to five years in state prison or $10,000. Second or subsequent convictions under (1)(d) or (1)(e) are felonies with up to five years or $25,000.

RCFP states no civil cause of action is authorised under the statute. Whether a common-law privacy tort would lie is outside what we can source.

No rule settles which state's law applies to a conversation spanning two of them, several may apply at once, and courts have reached opposite results on comparable facts. If anyone in the meeting is in Montana, the practical answer is to satisfy Montana. The general problem is on the US overview.

Montana wants a warning rather than an answer, so the sentence only has to be heard.

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.

Asking anyway is still worth doing, because someone else on the call may be somewhere that wants agreement. Longer 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. Where every participant's agreement is what makes the recording lawful, that means the whole of the obligation sits on you saying something, and the app will not remind you.

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 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, so a standing meeting is decided once. 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 anywhere. The one caveat is that it is not recoverable either.

None of that makes a recording lawful in Montana. Consent law is about the recording, not about where it is stored, so the fact that transcription runs on your own device and the audio is never written to disk is not an answer to the statute. It is an answer to a different and often more pressing question in the room.

• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Montana
• Mont. Code Ann. § 45-8-213 (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.