Fed up with crummy service from call-centers, Larry Lessig proposes a sensible solution: grant customers the right to record conversations with the companies they treat with, and provide them with the tools to do so.
But what if customers were able to document conversations on the phone easily? Then rogues would be much more certainly caught. Customers could activate the "record" button when things spun out of control. Complaints to management could then be validated easily–or discounted, depending on what was recorded. Rogues would fear retaliation for their behavior. They then would either give up the game, or move on to another job where nastiness could be practiced with less chance of detection.
Only trouble is, under current law, 40 percent of Americans live in jurisdictions where a telephone call can be recorded only with the express consent of everyone on the call. (See the very helpful summary at www.rcfp.org/taping/). In these jurisdictions, to document your phone call without announcing you're recording it is a crime. For ordinary people — those who don't routinely answer their phone with a recording that warns that the call may be monitored — this means that monitoring phone calls is effectively out of the question. Announcing the practice upfront seems odd, and announcing it midway through the conversation is likely to get the other party to simply hang up.