Making a call? Ever wonder how private your conversation is? How do you know if you’re being recorded?

Touchy issue. Even touchier with an independent university phone system.

There is some security in the law, which prohibits telephone eavesdropping without court orders, even on state-owned college campuses like Iowa State. That takes care of law enforcement agencies, but nothing prevents your friends from recording conversations.

At the Oct. 22 meeting of the Black Student Alliance, Jerry Stewart, assistant director of the Department of Public Safety, made mention of a system DPS has used in the investigation of harassing and annoying telephone calls.

At the meeting, Stewart said ISU has its own telephone system which sometimes makes it easier for DPS to identify the person making harassing calls.

“Harassment is when there is communication without justification, whether in writing, by telegram, or telephone, or in person with the intent to annoy, alarm or intimidate …those are fairly common on campus,” he said.

At the meeting, Stewart mentioned “wire trapping” and then said he may be saying too much. He later said he didn’t want to inform telephone harassment offenders about this process.

Stewart said “trap” does not imply wire tapping, and the term “trap” is confusing because it is difficult to discern the intended meaning.

“We will sometimes use the term ‘trap’ — which would be where we would be able to successfully determine who made the calls,” he said.

Loras Jaeger, DPS director, said, “We’ve put tape recorders on people’s phones with permission, but we are not doing wire tapping.”

Stewart said officials have installed these recording systems at the request of harassment victims.

This type of recording is legal in Iowa.

Paul Tanaka, director of university legal services, said Iowa is a one-party consent state. This means with the consent of one of the persons involved in a phone conversation, the conversation can be lawfully recorded.

This one-party consent law is applicable to nearly all phone calls made in Iowa between almost anyone.

These recorded conversations can be replayed for anyone. Not every state enforces this type of statute.

Dom Caristi, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, said the university does have “the authority to monitor phone conversations made for business purposes.”

The term business purposes is inclusive of student bills and other university phone bills.

He doesn’t believe many students consider that the university knows the location of the person they call, when they call them and how much time they spend on the phone.