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This is a non-opinion based followup to a previous question.

What constitutes "good faith" in negotiations?

What behavior during negotiations is considered unethical?

What measures can a party take if they suspect their counterparties of being dishonest?

  1. Can one clandestinely record the conversation? E.g., the suspected counterparty talks among themselves in a foreign language, and the one wants to ask his employee (so that the NDA, if any, is not an issue) to listen and translate.

  2. Can one clandestinely use voice-based lie detection? Please leave aside the issues of VSA's accuracy - let us assume for the purposes of this question that VSA is 100% accurate.

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closed as primarily opinion-based by jcmeloni, Michael Grubey, Joe Strazzere, MrFox, CincinnatiProgrammer Aug 28 '13 at 15:09

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

  • I would consider all of the above unethical. Depending onteh jurisdiction, some of it may be illegal as well. I certainly would not do business with anyone I caught doing such a thing. – HLGEM Aug 28 '13 at 14:21
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    @Joe that link is of dubious quality (despite being wikipedia, using phrases like 'ever popular book' suggests bias) – jmac Aug 29 '13 at 1:54
  • If the counterparty is either ignorant or culturally conditioned to particular business practices, they may not consider their behavior to be unethical and may not be 'lying' in the sense that a voice lie detector would detect stress markers. And some people are pathological, and aren't wired for consciousness the way most of you are. As a general rule, if you have some good reason to doubt your counterparty is reliable, you should simply avoid the relationship - unless you're the CIA and that's all you have to work with. – Meredith Poor Aug 29 '13 at 3:02

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