Recording and consent
Recording a session in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts bans the secret recording of any conversation, so the question is not whether everybody agreed but whether everybody knew. That is Massachusetts General Laws chapter 272 section 99, 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 Massachusetts the rule is all party.
The statute Massachusetts General Laws chapter 272 section 99
Section 99 is drafted differently from every other statute on this list. It does not ask whether a party consented, it asks whether the recording was secret, and it bans the secret interception of any wire or oral communication whether or not the conversation was private. The Supreme Judicial Court confirmed in Commonwealth v. Hyde that an open recording, made by a participant, with the other people present aware of it, falls outside the statute even where nobody said yes in so many words. Massachusetts is therefore stricter than an all party state in one respect and simpler in another.
The Massachusetts answer is to be visibly recording. Say it out loud, leave the indicator on screen where the client can see it, and never start a recording during a pause in a conversation that has already begun. Openness is the defence the statute actually offers.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Knowledge is what section 99 asks for, so a student under 18 has to be told rather than merely have a parent's signature on file. Tell both, in plain words, and tell them again on the first recorded session of a new term. A parent's written permission is still the thing an agency wants in its own records, and in Massachusetts it is not the thing the criminal statute is asking about.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under 201 CMR 17.00, the Massachusetts data security regulations.
Massachusetts has no comprehensive consumer privacy act, and it has something most states do not: a binding regulation that requires anyone holding personal information about a Massachusetts resident to keep a written information security programme. It is short, it is prescriptive about encryption of portable devices, and it applies regardless of business size. A tutor holding recordings on a laptop is inside it.
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.
- General Laws chapter 272 section 99, Massachusetts Legislature
- 201 CMR 17.00, Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation
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 Michigan
- Recording a session in Montana
- 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.