38 states agree with you and allow you to record any conversation you're a part of.

12 states, including california, disagree.

This is also, at least in Canada, why most security cameras only record video and not audio. If two people have a conversation that is recorded without their knowledge, you don’t even have one-party consent. You can record video in public but not audio.

Edit: where I am we have one-party consent rules for audio recording. I can have my phone in my pocket recording without you knowing just fine. But I can’t tape a microphone to a park bench and record the conversations there that I’m not a part of.

Also illegal in Belgium, and presumably many other European countries, without prior notification. Spying on people is not cool.

One person's spying is another person's whistleblowing.

For example, a commonly-held view online is that it should be legal to record interactions with police. By your definition, however, that would be "spying", as the police may not necessarily consent.

A lot of police interactions happen in public, and additionally when police are on duty and interacting with the public they have a reduced expectation of privacy.

It's generally only recording private conversations that's illegal.

It feels like you didn't think about the differences between the two situations at all

Come now, it's obvious that sometimes exceptional circumstances warrant the bending or breaking of the rules.

"Spying on people is not cool"

I don't particularly like this device mainly due because of the cloud related vulnerabilities - if it used all off-line models, I wouldn't be nearly as opposed to it.

On the other hand, let's not be deliberately disingenuous.

The goal of this device is to record conversations that you're part of, which one would hardly call "spying" in any conventional sense. That's why one-party recordings are legal in many states.

If you're part of a conversation, and want to capture part of it, is it really that hard to ask the other parties whether they're cool with it? If you don't, you're effectively spying on them, regardless of how much you sugarcoat it or whatever some states consider to be legal.

You’re not considering a critical set of edge cases.

For example, what if you’re being threatened by a coworker and wish to report it with some kind of evidence?

“Excuse me good sir, might I record your threats so that I can report you?” is probably not going to work.

Oh come on, this is a ridiculous discussion of silly pedantry. You're interpreting what I'm saying in bad faith. Of course there are edge cases, and that's fine, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread.