Can you elaborate on 2 a bit? As to the other points, I should clarify my statement above: I only meant that they should have no expectation of privacy from th

Can you elaborate on 2 a bit? As to the other points, I should clarify my statement above: I only meant that they should have no expectation of privacy from the person they're dealing with. Planting a bug in the police station or eavesdropping on a conversation to which you aren't a party seem reasonable to leave as illegal. I'm tempted to agree with other commenters that recording any conversation to which you are a party should be okay, but I haven't given it enough thought. For diplomacy, it seems like the people who would be doing the recording would most likely be other diplomats, and therefore immune from US law anyways. Case 3, it's easy enough to just say that while the social worker has no expectation of privacy, their clients do. If someone is having an interaction with the social worker where someone else's confidential information is disclosed, the social worker is the one who has messed up here, with the person recording it being, at most, auxiliary.