I wouldn't chance it. Stick an "audio may be recorded for performance evaluation purposes" on the drive thru kiosk and call it a day. Otherwise you're inviting litigation when something like this happens.
You can want things to be black and white but litigators are going to argue.
Drive thru conversations are not private under the Katz test, so there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. That makes video or audio recording in that setting lawful.
Katz came about because the FBI recorded a gambler outside the booth with the doors closed. Hence we have the Katz test.
Heck, you can even record someone making a drive thru order yourself and no one can do anything about it
Not a red herring. The Katz test defines when a conversation is private, and a drive thru order does not meet that standard, so recording there is lawful even when it is done by a private person and not by law enforcement.
Audio cannot be recorded without consent in CA. Security cameras have an option to disable audio for this reason. People never do it but it's the case.
It's related to wiretapping laws that are very broad.
> For the purposes of this section, “confidential communication” means any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.
Did you read that law? It applies to “Confidential communication…carried on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio”. Conversation in public is by nature not “confidential”. You are grossly misinterpreting this law and (unintentionally/ignorantly) spreading misinformation.
In Australia, at least in the late 90s, you were allowed to record voice and video without consent or notification of all parties, but you were not permitted to play/show the recordings to anyone else.
This was well know amongst the sort of people who regularly got harassed by police (in my circle of friends, riders of sportsbikes). There was well known legal advice saying to record every interaction you had with police, and if it turned out badly in any way, as soon as you got home write down the transcript of the conversation as "contemporaneous notes" and email them to your gmail account to establish a timestamp. But the only time you ever even mentioned your recording would be to your lawyer, so that if the cop challenged or contradicted your notes in court, your lawyer could then offer the recording as evidence.
These days, dashcams are pretty ubiquitous, and demonstrate that whatever the legal technicalities are, video recording in public without consent is not only widespread, but bashcam footage is also something police regularly request from the public.
Those don’t apply to public spaces in the USA. This is super well-established law. If you needed consent to record in public there would be nearly zero YouTube videos recorded in public. And security cameras would generally not be allowed to record audio. And Tesla’s “Sentry mode” would be illegal.
In the USA, there is no right or legal expectation of privacy in public spaces, which includes fast food restaurants that are open to the public (indoors or outdoors)
> You don’t get to secretly record voices in public spaces.
> Video recording is permitted without consent in the public places.
I have no idea why you would think that these two statements are related, or why people would continue this conversation. Fishing and skateboarding are two other things that are often allowed, but neither are related to recording audio.
And for anyone who thinks this is a nitpick, please look it up.
edit: also, saying that you can record people when you're obviously recording people is also not relevant. The problem is recording people without their knowledge or consent. I cannot put an audio recorder in my pocket in many places (such as Illinois) and record you, whether in a private space or in a public space. If I put my audio recorder on the table, and you can choose whether you want to speak or not, it's legally an entirely different scenario, whether we are in a public space or not.
Please stop spreading misinformation . There are so many court cases about this. A quick google will give you dozens you can read.
Legally there is no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in public spaces and the only limit on that are extreme telephoto lenses looking from public spaces into private spaces.
Unfortunately, you are not correct.[1] Recording police in a public place-- sure. Otherwise, eh, at best you're over-extrapolating (and ungenerously!) from your local circumstance.
Okay, wow -- I stand corrected. I will edit my comments. It will take me awhile to wrap my head around Massachusett's-style state-level restrictions. While I wouldn't personally expect this to survive a Supreme Court adjudication, apparently there exists no Supreme Court ruling either upholding or striking down the prohibition on secretly recording oral conversations in public.
The key element here that everyone seems to be confused about, is secret vs non-secret.
If you have an obvious security camera, or an obvious camera that normally would record audio, and you’re in public waving it around and it records audio? You are not secretly recording audio.
Same if someone is standing next to a obvious and clearly visible security camera which normally could also record audio, also, not secretly recording audio.
A hidden mic in your jacket, or like in that case, hiding the camera under a jacket? That is hidden recording.
The general rule of thumb is - if everyone can clearly see what you’re doing, it’s not secret.
