Federal Crime:
The federal Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2510 et seq., prohibits the willful interception of telephone communication by means of any electronic, mechanical, or other device without an applicable exemption.
But this only applies to intercepting calls you are not a party to — such as setting up some sort of bugging or recording equipment to record the calls of someone else when you are not taking part in the phone call; it does notprohibit recording your own phone calls or calls made to you when you are still on the line, or even calls where you are on an extension phone and listening with the knowledge of the others on the phone, and none of it restricts your right to use an answering machine and record the calls and play back the messages later for anyone else, even if the caller made clear that you were the only one they intended to ever have listen to it.
In fact the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 specifically exempts calls with at least one party approving the recording (usually the person approving it is the person doing it). 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2511(2)(d).
State Law:
Illinois is, by _statute_ a two party state. However, case law from both the IL Supreme Court and various Illinois appellate courts have declared Illinois a one-party state in the case of private citizens (businesses and plain folks - NOT law enforcement). The reigning concensus is that one-party consenual recording is merely "enhanced note-taking" and since some folks have total recall without recording, how can the other party have any expectation of privacy to a conversation held with another person.
Illinois requires prior consent of all participants to monitor or record a
phone conversation. Ill. Rev. Stat. Ch. 38, Sec. 14-2. There is no specific
business telephone exception, but in general courts have found extension
telephones do not constitute eavesdropping devices. Criminal penalties for
unlawful eavesdropping include up to three years' imprisonment or $10,000 in
fines and the civil remedy provides for recovery of actual and punitive
damages.
