Perfect is the enemy of good. I've found it's much better to get a project up and running as an "MVP" than to chase the perfect until the details suck all the fun out of it.
It is good to care about this sort of thing, but this is untargeted recording in public. It is not very different to the fact that if I was recording a home movie in public I may incidentally record someone's conversation.
The real harm would occur if the conversations were being stored and analysed systematically, for example by police. But the OP is not doing that (they claim).
It's a very public place in the United States. It's not clear that people should expect or be entitled to much privacy in these public places.
We also know that, regardless of the degree of privacy to which people should be entitled, they're not legally entitled to much privacy in these places. Federal court rulings have been extremely clear on this point. In these places, we don't even have the right to not be photographed.
>they're not legally entitled to much privacy in these places.
While I think this is a really cool project, I also agree with the privacy issues. CA is a two party consent state, and recording a conversation (which this is likely to do) like this is likely illegal. While a person might not have a expectation of privacy about someone just hearing the conversation, they are protected by law if they are recorded without their knowledge.
NB: I am not a lawyer, and the above could very well be wrong.
Edit: As I was informed below, I was wrong on the legal points.
There is no right to privacy in a public space. It is not illegal to record an area where individuals would not have the expectation of privacy, even without their consent. Therefore, this is not illegal.
If this were a restaurant, that would be a different story.
> Exceptions (one-party consent required): (1) where there is no expectation of privacy, (2) recording within government proceedings that are open to the public, (3) recording certain crimes or communications regarding such crimes (for the purpose of obtaining evidence), (4) a victim of domestic violence recording a communication made to
him/her by the perpetrator (for the purpose of obtaining a restraining order or
evidence that the perpetrator violated an existing restraining order), and (5) a peace officer recording a communication within a location in response to an emergency hostage situation.
No legally protected right. This doesn't mean it is ethical, and given that it is a protected right in other jurisdictions shows it deserves more consideration and should not be hand waived away.
If "it's legal" is the argument being used to defense a behavior, it's safe to assume it's not actually a good one.
No, "it's legal" is the argument being used to defend the "it's illegal" and "you're not allowed to" argument. The argument to support the project is that it's cool af.
I sincerely doubt that. Should you blindly apply it to everything? Of course not, nuance exists.
Apply it OP's project. The project is super cool, popular, and most of all it's done and it exists. The worst thing you can say about it is that it's not perfect and failed one weird purity test. Oh no, public audio gets sent to a server!
