Recording and consent
Recording a session in the Philippines.
Every party to a private conversation in the Philippines has to authorise the recording, and being one of the people talking is not an exception. That is Republic Act 4200, the Anti-Wiretapping Act, 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 the Philippines the rule is all party.
The statute Republic Act 4200, the Anti-Wiretapping Act
Republic Act 4200 is one of the strictest statutes on this list. It makes it unlawful for any person, not being authorised by all the parties to any private communication, to record it using any device, and the Supreme Court held in Ramirez v. Court of Appeals that the phrase reaches a party to the conversation as well as an outsider. A recording made in breach is also inadmissible in any proceeding, so it is worthless for the purpose somebody usually made it for.
Authorised by all the parties is the statutory phrase, so a session with two people in it needs two yeses. Get them on the recording, which the Data Privacy Act expressly accepts as evidence of consent, and stop if anybody declines.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Ask the parent or guardian of a client under 18 and keep the answer, and note that the Data Privacy Act treats information about a minor with more care than the general rule. Philippine practice on child protection in education and coaching settings is developing quickly, and a practitioner recording sessions with young people should expect to be asked to show consent rather than to describe it.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under Republic Act 10173, the Data Privacy Act of 2012.
The Data Privacy Act requires consent to be freely given, specific and informed, and evidenced by written, electronic or recorded means, which is unusual and useful: a recorded yes is expressly one of the permitted forms. It also requires a personal information controller to notify the National Privacy Commission and affected persons of a breach likely to give rise to a real risk of serious harm.
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.
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 India
- Recording a session in the United Arab Emirates
- 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.