A Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and D.C.

• Introduction

• State-by-state guide

• Tape-recording laws
  at a glance

• Consent and its limits

• Interstate phone calls

• Possession and
  publication

• The FCC’s role

• Cellular & cordless calls

• Citations to cases

Maine

Interception of wire and oral communications is a “Class C” crime under the state criminal code, and an interceptor is someone other than the sender or receiver of a communication who is not in the range of “normal unaided hearing” and has not been given the authority to hear or record the communication by a sender or receiver. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 15, § 710. Thus, the statute does not prohibit a party to the conversation from recording.

Disclosure of the contents of intercepted communications, knowing the information was obtained by interception, is a “Class C” violation of the criminal code as well. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 15, § 710.

Anyone whose communications have been intercepted can sue for civil damages and recover the greater of $100 a day for each day of violation or actual damages, and also attorney fees and litigation costs. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 15, § 711.

A hidden cameras law makes it a “Class D” crime to use a camera to view or record a person in a private place, “including, but not limited to, changing or dressing rooms, bathrooms and similar places,” or in a public place if one views any portion of another person’s body “when that portion of the body is in fact concealed from public view under clothing,” and a reasonable person would expect it to be safe from surveillance. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, §511.