Recording and consent
Recording a session in Montana.
Montana asks that every person taking part be given notice that the conversation is being recorded, which in a session means saying so out loud. That is Montana Code Annotated 45-8-213, 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 Montana the rule is all party by notice.
The statute Montana Code Annotated 45-8-213
Montana's privacy in communications offence is written around warning rather than around consent. The section makes it unlawful to record a conversation by hidden means, and then excepts a recording where all parties are given notice that it is being made. The distinction matters: a Montana practitioner does not need a form back, they need everybody in the room or on the call to have been told. A notice that is given and then ignored still satisfies the section, which a consent requirement would not, and a notice given after the recording started does not.
Say it at the start, every time, in the same words. Montana is the clearest case on this list for a script rather than a form, because what the statute wants is a sentence somebody heard rather than a box somebody ticked.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Notice to a student under 18 means telling the student, in words a fourteen year old understands, and telling whoever booked the session. Montana does not require the parent's signature for the purposes of this section. Get it anyway if the parent is the person paying, because the argument you are actually likely to have is a commercial one rather than a criminal one.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act.
Montana's privacy act has the lowest volume threshold of any state statute in the country, which makes it the one most likely to catch a small practice: a controller processing the personal data of fifty thousand consumers is inside it, and the figure drops where data is sold. It gives residents rights to access, correct, delete and take their data elsewhere, and it requires a recognised universal opt out signal to be honoured.
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.
- Montana Code Annotated 45-8-213, Montana Legislature
- Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act, Montana Department of Justice
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 Nevada
- Recording a session in New Hampshire
- 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.