Lessons for California Business Over Recorded Phone Calls
*This article originally appeared in L.A. Biz at bizjournals.com on Oct. 11, 2016.
Over the past few months, Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s feud over a recorded phone call has put the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) in the spotlight.
Who can record a call? What type of consent is needed? These questions are not just fodder for celebrity tabloids but fundamentally important issues for companies recording customer service calls.
CIPA, codified in California’s Penal Code Section 630 et seq., is an invasion of privacy statute originally designed to restrict wire-tapping and the recording of calls snatched from the airways at the dawn of the wireless telephone industry.
However, in recent years, plaintiffs’ lawyers have embraced Section 632.7 of the Act as a sword to attack companies that record customer service calls.
