Recording and consent
Recording a session in the United Arab Emirates.
Recording a conversation in the Emirates without the agreement of the people in it is a criminal offence, and the penalties include imprisonment. That is Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021 on combatting rumours and cybercrimes, 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 United Arab Emirates the rule is all party.
The statute Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021 on combatting rumours and cybercrimes
The cybercrimes decree-law makes it an offence to use an electronic device to record or transmit conversations or to take or publish images of a person without consent, and it is enforced. The Emirates treat this as a privacy offence against the person rather than as a technical interception matter, which is why being a party to the conversation does not help. Penalties include a custodial term and deportation for a non citizen. It is the single most consequential jurisdiction on this list for a practitioner who records by default.
Get it in writing before the session and confirm it out loud at the start. The Emirates is the jurisdiction where the conservative practice is not caution but compliance, and where a recording made without agreement is a criminal matter rather than a complaint.
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, in writing, and keep it. The Personal Data Protection Law requires the consent of a guardian where the person is a minor, and the criminal exposure under the cybercrimes law does not soften because the person recorded was a child. A practice teaching or coaching young people in the Emirates should treat the written consent as a condition of the booking.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the protection of personal data.
The Personal Data Protection Law is the Emirates' first general data statute and follows the European shape: a lawful basis, a purpose, rights of access, correction and erasure, and a cross border transfer regime. The free zones are separate: the DIFC and the ADGM each have their own data protection regulations, and a practitioner established in one of them is governed by that regime rather than by the federal law.
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.
- Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021, UAE Legislation
- Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on personal data protection, UAE Legislation
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 South Africa
- Recording a session in Germany
- 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.