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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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  • 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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