Recording and consent
Recording a session in France.
Recording words spoken in private in France without the consent of the person who spoke them is a criminal offence under article 226-1. That is Code pénal article 226-1, 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 France the rule is all party.
The statute Code pénal article 226-1
Article 226-1 punishes anyone who wilfully invades the privacy of another by recording, without the consent of the person concerned, words spoken in private. Article 226-2 adds the same penalty for keeping or using such a recording. French law then supplies a presumption that cuts the other way: where the recording was made in the presence of the person concerned and they did not object although they could have, consent is presumed. That presumption is why saying the sentence out loud matters more in France than a signature does.
Say it out loud in front of the client, because the presumption of consent under French law attaches to a person who was present, was told, and did not object. Then write the retention period down, which is the half the CNIL actually enforces.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
For a client under 18, French practice is to obtain the written authorisation of the holders of parental authority, and the CNIL's position is that a child's data is processed on the basis of that authorisation rather than the child's own. French law treats a person's voice and image as an attribute of personality, so a report quoting a young person is a use of their words as well as a processing of their data.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation and the loi Informatique et Libertés.
The CNIL is the oldest data protection authority in Europe and publishes detailed sector guidance that French clients increasingly expect a supplier to have read. Its position on recordings is consistent: name the purpose, keep only what the purpose needs, set a retention period in advance and write it down. It has fined organisations for recordings kept without a stated period more often than for making them at all.
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.
- Code pénal article 226-1, Légifrance
- Les bases légales, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés
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 Spain
- Recording a session in the Netherlands
- 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.