Recording and consent
Recording a session in Connecticut.
Connecticut requires everyone on a recorded telephone call to have consented, while an in person conversation is governed by the narrower criminal statute. That is Connecticut General Statutes section 52-570d, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Connecticut the rule is all party by telephone.
The statute Connecticut General Statutes section 52-570d
Section 52-570d is a civil statute and it is the one that catches practitioners. It forbids recording an oral telephonic communication unless everyone has consented, and it sets out the permitted ways of getting there: prior written consent, a verbal notification recorded at the start of the call, or an automatic warning tone. Connecticut's criminal eavesdropping offence at section 53a-189 is narrower and is read as one party. So a Connecticut coach recording a phone or video call is inside the strict rule.
The statute names three ways to comply and the easiest one for a session is the second: say it, record it, keep the file. That way the proof of consent and the thing consented to are the same object rather than a form somebody has to go and find.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
For a client under 18, take the parent's written consent and keep it, because section 52-570d names prior written consent as the first of its three permitted routes and a form signed once removes the question for every call afterwards. Say the sentence at the start of the call as well; the section allows either, and doing both costs one sentence.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Connecticut Data Privacy Act.
Connecticut's act was the template several later state statutes copied. It gives residents access, correction, deletion, portability and an opt out of targeted advertising and profiling, requires consent before sensitive data is processed, and obliges a data protection assessment for higher risk processing. Its thresholds mean a solo practice is usually outside it and a large agency is not.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Connecticut General Statutes chapter 899, Connecticut General Assembly
- Connecticut Data Privacy Act, Connecticut Office of the Attorney General
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Delaware
- Recording a session in the other 36 US states
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.