Recording and consent
Recording a session in New Zealand.
A person taking part in a New Zealand conversation may record it, and the Privacy Act is what governs what happens to the recording afterwards. That is the Crimes Act 1961 section 216B and the Privacy Act 2020, 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 New Zealand the rule is one party.
The statute the Crimes Act 1961 section 216B and the Privacy Act 2020
Section 216B makes it an offence to intercept a private communication using an interception device, and it excepts a party to the communication. So a practitioner recording their own session is outside the offence. What replaces it is the Privacy Act 2020, whose information privacy principle 1 asks whether the collection was necessary for a lawful purpose connected to your function, and whose principle 3 requires the person to be told what is being collected and why, at the time it is collected rather than later.
Telling the client at the time of collection is what principle 3 asks for, which is what the permission sentence is. Say it, then say how long the audio is kept, which is the second half of the same principle and the part most practitioners forget.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner treats information about a child as requiring particular care and expects collection to go through a parent or guardian where the child is young. For a paid session with somebody under 18, ask the guardian, and tell the young person themselves in a sentence they can follow. Principle 3 is about the person the information is about, and that person is the student.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Privacy Act 2020.
The Privacy Act 2020 applies to every business and organisation in New Zealand with no turnover threshold at all, which makes it one of the few regimes that certainly covers a single practitioner. It added mandatory notification of privacy breaches that cause serious harm, and it reaches an overseas business carrying on business in New Zealand even if it has no presence there.
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.
- Crimes Act 1961 section 216B, New Zealand Legislation
- Privacy principles, Office of the Privacy Commissioner
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 Singapore
- Recording a session in the Philippines
- 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.