In the US the only function of two party consent laws is to allow people to lie about what they said. Even in two party consent states you can still report what someone said to you. And they can lie and say no I never said that. Without recordings it's just one person's word against the other's.
I interpret the "surprisingly" as shocked that that many have common sense one party consent rules. My skepticism would think idiotic rules to be the majority.
From my (European) perspective this sounds strange. Wouldn't you be worried when e.g. your employer or partner is secretly recording your conversations with them? In Canada it seems to be even legal to publish these conversations without consent, though I don't know about the US.
Publishing is a whole other thing, but why should I be worried that someone is recording what I'm saying, in general?
And if I'm discussing sensitive information (say, I'm discussing an extra-marital affair, or illegal conduct), why should I think I can rely on the law to protect me from the recording? Is my marriage less ruined if the recording was illegally made and illegally presented to my spouse?
> Publishing is a whole other thing, but why should I be worried that someone is recording what I'm saying, in general?
Well, this reminds me of
> You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.
The phrase - widely used in discussions of Internet security - is most commonly attributed to Joseph Goebbels in 1933. You probably agree with that statement while I have different intuitions.
> why should I think I can rely on the law to protect me from the recording?
Why should you think the law can protect you from anything? Because violating the law comes with a substantial potential cost, which is a risk many actors are not willing to take.
> You probably agree with that statement while I have different intuitions.
I most certainly do not. That phrase has nothing to do with this discussion in fact - it applies to cases of making private statements either public or at least known to the state apparatus.
Private recordings of private conversations have no similar issue. In my opinion, recording a conversation you and I have is no different from keeping hold of a letter or an email that you sent me, and it's certainly not something I routinely fear.
And, when I do say things that I fear others may hear, I am not content with the fact that I could sue you for recording that information. I would go to technical lengths to actually try to ensure that you can't record it.
> Why should you think the law can protect you from anything? Because violating the law comes with a substantial potential cost, which is a risk many actors are not willing to accept.
The law has almost no power in private settings. Technically, if I bought a music CD from Sony, I am not allowed to play it to you, since that would require performance rights. Does Sony or anyone on the planet expect me to fear legal repercussions for doing so in the privacy of my home? Obviously not. It will only even become a possible legal issue if I start publicizing this in some way.
Similarly, even if it's technically illegal for me to hold recordings of my conversations with friends, it is in practice all but impossible for me to be prosecuted about it unless and until I publish them. Even if you suspected I did record our conversations, you would need significant proof of that before convincing a judge to issue a search warrant to try to prove I did. If I am simply keeping these for my own purposes and not sharing with others, you will never have such proof. So, even if it were deeply illegal, I would have very little reason to fear it in practice.
It's kind of relevant though. Germany had a very bad experiences with being spied on by gestapo informants. After the war, East Germany had a secret service, the Stasi, which massively spied on its citizens. Phone calls were routinely listened to, and countless informants collected information about people they were close to. Trust was a rare commodity. Americans (luckily) never had the experience of living in an authoritarian surveillance state, where everyone could be suspected to spy on you. So it not surprising surveillance isn't taken so lightly today as in the US.
