The Saxonburg Museum at 199 N. Rebecca St. has acquired several new exhibits in the past few years. Butler Eagle File Photo

SAXONBURG — The security cameras at Roebling Park came with a new feature: audio recording. Due to Pennsylvania law, however, the borough says that it has disabled that for the time being.

The issue came up at a Saxonburg borough council meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 19, during the public comment phase, when a resident mentioned that he had come across the cameras at the museum for the first time, along with a sign saying that audio recording was in use.

When the resident asked if it was legal to record audio through security cameras, borough manager Steven May reassured him that the feature had been disabled.

According to Pennsylvania’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance laws, it is a third-degree felony to intercept an oral communication, with few exceptions. Pennsylvania is a “two-party consent” state, meaning that all parties must give consent for a conversation to be legally recorded.

“You can’t record unless you post a sign at every entrance in the park saying you’re being audio- and visually recorded,” May said. “I have no problem posting the signs, but in the meantime, audio has been disabled on all cameras.”

May says that the security system was installed at Roebling park last month, shortly before the Saxonburg Museum hosted its Spooky Streets event.

He added that the purpose of audio recording on the security system is to automatically deploy whenever it detects the sound of glass breaking. This was an attractive feature to the borough, which has had a history of windows being broken at John Roebling’s original wire rope workshop, located adjacent to the museum at Roebling Park.

“About two years ago we had a person break windows out of the wire rope workshop,” May said.

According to May, there is a sign alerting onlookers to the possibility of audio being recorded, but there’s only one, and it may not be enough to stay ahead of the wiretapping laws. May described the sign as similar in size to ADT security signs which are sometimes found on front yards.

“The only way to get around that is to post blatantly obvious signs that say audio and video recording in progress,” May said.

“I don’t like the idea of Big Brother,” said council president Aaron Piper. “And I don’t want to have a conversation recorded when I’m enjoying time in the park. We want to be able to relax, have a good time, and enjoy the park and the museum.”

However, May and Piper both said that they didn’t want to abandon the idea of the glass-breaking detection.