Is Wyoming a one-party consent state?

Wyo. Stat. § 7-3-702(b)(iv) permits interception "where the person is a party to the communication or where one (1) of the parties … has given prior consent", but not "if the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act".

Wire, oral and electronic are covered. RCFP reports the electronic branch reaching text messages and wireless communications because the law covers "any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence". The oral branch requires an expectation of privacy: the protected category is "any oral communication uttered by a person who reasonably expects and circumstances justify the expectation that the communication is not subject to interception".

No state-specific authority was found on notice methods. The Kilpatrick chart records "N/A" in both notice columns and carries a general footnote worth knowing: where it assumes a notice is permissible based on other jurisdictions' rulings, there has been no specific evaluation by courts in that state.

A felony under § 7-3-702: a fine of not more than $1,000, imprisonment for not more than five years, or both. There is a carve-down to a misdemeanor for interception of certain radio communications (cellular, cordless, public land mobile radio service, or paging), punishable by a fine of not more than $750 and up to six months. Disclosing the contents is also a felony.

On the civil damages figure, be careful. Private right of action under § 7-3-710(a). RCFP states the greater of actual damages or $1,000 a day for each day of violation, plus punitive damages, fees and costs. That is a far higher per-day rate than any neighbouring statute, and no primary source for § 7-3-710 could be obtained: Justia, the Wyoming Legislature's PDF and FindLaw's Wyoming codes all failed or returned a table of contents. The CRS survey independently confirms § 7-3-710 is the civil-liability provision, but not the amount. Treat the $1,000-per-day figure as single-sourced and verify it before relying on it.

Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for Wyoming. 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 Wyoming 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: Wyoming
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-3-702
• § 7-3-702 (secondary rendering)
• Congressional Research Service R41733
• Kilpatrick 50-state wiretap chart, July 2024

• 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.