Two-party Consent Laws
A group recently secretly videotaped interactions with employees of the poverty-rights organization ACORN, and those tapes have been played widely in the media.
The ACORN situation illustrates the issue that two-party consent laws can create, irrespective of your views on ACORN or the recent events.
Certain of the tapes were made in Baltimore, and Maryland is a two-party consent state. Maryland law not only covers wire and electronic communications, but it also includes oral communications, defined as "any conversation or words spoken to or by any person in private conversation." (Information Security & Privacy, Section 8:132.) Maryland's wiretap law provides criminal remedies for the violation of the law, and, like other wiretap laws, violation of this law is a felony. (Information Security & Privacy, Sections 8:132, 137.)
The dispute here will be over whether the communications were "private." I have not researched Maryland law on this point, but California's two-party consent law is instructive on this point regarding what is a "confidential" communication. Under California law, the test for confidentiality is an objective one. One party's subjective intent is irrelevant to this analysis because a communication is confidential if either party reasonably believes the communication to be "confined to the parties." I am not aware whether Maryland law applies a similar definition, but this will be one of the key issues in this case.
These types of cases illustrate the importance of clearly identifying what are, and are not, permissible uses of employer-owned equipment so that expectations of privacy are clearly understood by employees.