Recording and consent
Recording a session in Sweden.
A participant in a Swedish conversation may record it, because the eavesdropping offence reaches only somebody who is not taking part. That is Brottsbalken chapter 4 section 9a, 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 Sweden the rule is one party.
The statute Brottsbalken chapter 4 section 9a
Chapter 4 section 9a of the Swedish penal code creates the offence of olovlig avlyssning, unlawful listening, and it is drafted to reach a person who secretly listens to or records a conversation in which they are not taking part. A practitioner in the session is taking part, so the offence does not apply. Sweden's data protection authority, Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, is the body whose rules then govern the recording, and Swedish clients tend to be well informed about them.
Ask anyway, then make sure you could answer an access request. The Swedish risk is not a prosecution for recording, it is a client politely asking for everything you hold and a practitioner not knowing where the audio went.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Sweden sets the digital age of consent at 13, the lowest permitted under the GDPR, and Swedish practice still expects a guardian to be asked for anything involving a paid service and a written report. The Swedish Education Act and the practice around it mean anybody working with school age students should be ready to show what was agreed and by whom.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Dataskyddslagen.
The Swedish supplementary act is short and the GDPR does the work. Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten's guidance emphasises storage limitation and the duty to document a retention decision, and Sweden's long standing openness tradition means Swedish clients are unusually likely to exercise a right of access. A practice that cannot produce everything it holds about one named client within a month has a problem in Sweden before it has one anywhere else.
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 Poland
- Recording a session in Japan
- 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.