Earkeep
Is New Mexico a one-party consent state?
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For telephone and telegraph communications, yes. For conversation in a room, the statute does not reach it at all, so there is no state consent rule to satisfy. Calling New Mexico simply one-party is accurate for calls and misleading for a meeting.
The short answer
Record your own calls and meetings in New Mexico and no state statute stands in your way. Two caveats: nobody has decided whether mobile calls are inside the statute, and the civil-remedy section refers to oral communications the prohibition apparently does not reach.
The statute
N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-12-1 prohibits "cutting, breaking, tapping or making any connection with any telegraph or telephone line" and reading or copying messages intended for another. Every limb is tied to specific transmission infrastructure: lines, wires, cables, instruments.
Both RCFP and a specialist source read that as not extending to face-to-face conversation, the specialist source citing State v. Hogervorst for the point. No expectation-of-privacy element appears in the text reproduced.
Two caveats for anyone relying on this. On mobile phones, no appellate court has held whether wireless transmission falls within "telephone line, wire, cable or instrument", so RCFP advises caution, and the specialist source notes that the federal wiretap act, which is one-party, would cover the gap. And there is an internal oddity: § 30-12-11 grants a civil action to any person whose "wire or oral communication" is intercepted, so the remedy provision speaks of oral communications the prohibition apparently does not reach.
What happens if you get it wrong
A misdemeanor under § 30-12-1. A secondary source gives up to 364 days in county jail and a fine up to $1,000 under § 31-19-1; RCFP says only "misdemeanor" without a figure, so treat the numbers as single-sourced.
Private right of action under § 30-12-11: actual damages, liquidated damages of not less than $100 per day or $1,000, whichever is greater, plus punitive damages and reasonable fees and costs. Good-faith reliance on a court order is a complete defence.
If the other person is in another state
Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for New Mexico. 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.
What to say
Nothing in New Mexico 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.
Where Earkeep sits in this
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.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
Is New Mexico a one-party consent state?
For telephone and telegraph calls, yes. For in-person conversation the statute does not reach the conduct at all, so there is no consent rule to satisfy, which is a different thing from being affirmatively permitted.
Does New Mexico law cover mobile phone calls?
Genuinely unsettled. No appellate court has held whether wireless transmission falls within the statute's references to a telephone line, wire, cable or instrument. RCFP advises caution; the federal wiretap act, which is one-party, would cover the gap either way.
Can I sue for an illegal recording in New Mexico?
§ 30-12-11 gives a civil action with liquidated damages of the greater of $100 a day or $1,000, plus punitive damages and fees. Oddly it refers to wire or oral communications, while the prohibition it sits beside appears to reach only wire, so the fit between the two is imperfect.
Related
- 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.
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