The origins of civilization can be traced to the development of language. Language served man’s primary needs to evolve civilizations. Language or the complexity of human languages separates humans from the other species with which humans evolved and those humans now share the planet. Language served man’s physical needs of shelter, food, and clothing, his spiritual and religious needs, his educational and intellectual needs, his cultural needs, and yes, even his baser needs of aggression and conflict. But language’s most profound role is satisfying the human need to socialize, interact with each other, and find companionship on an otherwise desolate and lonely planet.
Conversation, the most sublime use of language sprouts love, cooperation, relationships, and the coming together of people as families, tribes, and ultimately nations. With technology, starting with the telephone, conversations became global. People could talk over vast distances. The first moonwalkers spoke to us from the surface of the moon. Coded language is now transmitted to reach other sentient beings in the universe. Perhaps, one day, extra-terrestrials will talk back to us.
However, despite all that technology has done to extend conversations, it now threatens that wonderful art at a fundamental level. Much has been written about how face-to-face conversation is being replaced by the artefacts of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter for many people. But that is not what this article is about. Nor is it about how we can now talk with non-sentients like Siri, automated buses, or other bots that eliminate the need to speak with people. This article is about how technology, particularly sound recording devices used secretly is poised to undermine the trust and confidentiality of conversations. It is also about how law and the courts have come to aid and legitimize the surreptitious process.
There are, of course, in different situations, obvious benefits to recording conversations for educational, medical, therapeutic, and documentary purposes. Also, the recording of official proceedings, including those in a court of law serves useful purposes. In these contexts, the sound recording provides a more exact account of the proceedings, adding nuances that a written record cannot always provide. Further, in all these instances the people who are being recorded are told of the recording. It is not done secretly.
Technology’s threat arises from the devices it has spawned to enable recordings to be made in secret without the knowledge of the person being recorded. There is freedom in the way we converse. Conversational speech is fluid and not fixed in any material form unless recorded. Besides that, spoken words are always provisional and subject to change and correction. One often speaks without being accurate unless accuracy is required, as when giving evidence in a court of law. These characteristics of speech make a speaker vulnerable to manipulation by someone recording a conversation to make utterances with consequences that he did not intend or fully appreciate. The practice of covertly recording a conversation with a view to gain an advantage over the other person in respect of any transaction or for the purpose of obtaining evidence against that person in a legal dispute is at the very least unconscionable.
The law’s response.
There is no provision in any of our laws that makes covert recordings of conversations illegal. On the other hand, the law of evidence as expressed in the Evidence Act 1950, allows the admission of sound recordings, howsoever made, as evidence. The only safeguard to the admission of sound recordings under this broad provision is expressed through a number of judge-made rules relating to the procedures in which the recording is made. The specific laws on the admissibility of sound recordings ‘howsoever’ made as evidence and the more draconian laws permitting the official tapping of telephone conversations run counter to the statutory personal data protection laws and the right to individual privacy that is being developed by our courts.
Clearly, there is a need for a review of the laws that currently see no ethical objection to the covert recording of personal conversations. The sanctity of interpersonal conversations must be protected to preserve social relationships between family members, employers and employees, teachers and students, and friends and lovers.
Kinnu Nonem is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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