I recently did a search for an app to record phone conversations on my iphone. I thought this would be a handy gadget as I have no memory at all and I wanted to be able to play back what was said and make notes after, plus using it to interview people on the phone for this blog or whatever would be great. Anyways it turns out that theres a law against it in the UK and in several states of the US that forbids you from recording phone conversations without the other person being made aware of it. I dont really understand why this law exists, so maybe someone would like to explain the ethical difference between my memory and that of a mechanical recorder.
If there is good reason then I would also like to know why when I talk to my financial advisor at the Bank that he repeats everything back to me. He was obviously doing this ‘for the record’. It’s kind of weird so I laughingly pointed out that he might as well just tell me he’s recording it to cover his back in case I decide to try and sue him for whatever. He sort of laughed embarrassingly and admitted he had to do it for ‘compliance’ or whatever, and I thought no more about it. Till now, when I find out that I’m not allowed to do it. Is this another example of banks being able to do stuff the rest of us cant do, stuff like like create money out of thin air and then earn interest on it, pay themselves whatever they fancy whether they succeed or not, and be bailed out when their bets go wrong?
By the way I started writing this by naming the bank then thought better of it as I didn’t want to do battle with the giants or am I being too soft/paranoid? Does anyone understand the libel laws? Anyway I suspect if one bank does it they probably all do so its probably irrelevant. Would really like to know more about this so do comment.