You can have a face-to-face conversation with a friend, but how do you do that if you want to talk to a therapist? No therapist is gonna make an exemption and leave their phone in another room, not to mention, they literally write their notes into the computer system, instead of on paper.
And with lawyers? I just read about how Luigi Mangione’s conversation with his lawyer is being unlawfully recorded. How do you even have a conversation with your lawyer if you are in custody and they could just hide recoding devices all around the jail?
Sure, maybe they can’t use the evidence in court, but they could just leak an out-of-context audio clip to the press to win the “court of public opinion”.
That’s the neat part…you don’t!
I think it’s impossible to have truly private conversations not just with therapists but with any kind of legally mandated reporter. at the end of the day, they’ll always choose self preservation over losing their career just because the state is trying to disappear one of their patients. they can either hand your medical file over or lose their licence.
I’m sure a very small minority are willing to risk their licence by falsifying records (see partisan therapists during the Holocaust), but most of them aren’t brave enough.
If there’s not the threat of them being punished then they wouldn’t fuck over their patients.
That’s the fix
It’s one of the thing where laws and audit can help a lot. Hospital (and lawyers) are supposed to secure their data. But nobody will care unless doctor loose their licence and hospital management get fired upon negligence with patient data.
You could do what I do. Say all the things. Contradictory things. I never say anything. But what I say is the truth, so I can always fall back and say I told you so. And you’d never know what it is, because I’ve said too much, and nothing at all. Where is the cookie man in our time of vegitables? Now where did I put that corn? I gave it to Dr Katz, medicine woman. I jaywalked just last week! No babies were harmed in the filming of this movie. I don’t know the muffin man, stop asking! Where was I? Where were YOU??? I never had corn in my life. Batman is just a muscular version of Ted Turner. Now have fun deciding what to make of any of this. I never said that.
reminds me of Garak from DS9. telling the truth and lying at the same time every time
You can (and some do) insist, that all phones and other digital devices be left outside or out in a well isolated place like a fridge. Furthermore you can use methods of encryption for both physical notes and digital notes. Neither is completely safe from being compromised, but then again hardly anything truly is.
If you want to be fairly certain to not be monitored, always leave digital devices behind and have meetings in varying locations with few or ideally no other people around. Only discuss confidential information with people you know and trust. Even then, experience from places like East Germany proves, nothing is truly safe from being compromised if enough time and energy is spent on the issue.
