U.S. Legal/Medical Records Transcribed Offshore Pose Risks to Privacy and Information...

U.S. Legal/Medical Records Transcribed Offshore Pose Risks to Privacy and
Information Security, NCRA Warns

VIENNA, Va., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A growing amount of legal and
medical record transcribing is being offshored to foreign countries, posing a
new risk of identity theft and disclosure of confidential information of U.S.
citizens, the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) warned today.

In a "State of Court Reporting" interview, NCRA Executive Director Mark Golden
said the practice of transcribing court and medical information overseas is
growing, with stringent American privacy and information security rules often
sacrificed in an effort to find the cheapest transcribing vendors.

In one instance, Golden noted, transcriptions for an Indiana jury trial were
prepared in Hong Kong without the knowledge of the judge or the court and in
violation of administrative rules. In another case, a Philippine transcription
subcontractor threatened to post medical records of U.S. patients on the
Internet unless she was paid in a timely fashion for her services.

Golden said: "Because they are the 'guardians of the record,' NCRA members and
other affiliated court reporters have traditionally and historically continued
to place the highest value on the accuracy, impartiality, and confidentiality
of the records they are creating. Once that content has gone outside the
borders of the United States and is being prepared by individuals overseas, we
have serious concerns as to whether the same level of scrutiny that Americans
are afforded here will be provided abroad to protect that confidential
information."

As more and more legal and medical content goes to areas with substantial
English-speaking populations, such as the Philippines, Hong Kong, and India,
NCRA members worry that privacy and information security will be impossible to
guarantee.

"The type of work that court reporters handle every day is extraordinarily
sensitive and governed often by local court rules and federal regulations such
as the HIPAA Privacy Act, which would essentially lose their impact once the
product goes off-shore," Golden said.

Audio from the interview is posted in the Media Room of the NCRA Web site at
www.NCRAonline.org.

In other observations from his "State of Court Reporting" interview, Golden
noted:

-- The supply of court reporters still seriously lags behind demand for their
services in courtrooms and law offices, in television studios to caption
newscasts, and in schools and other settings to provide interpretive services
for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

-- Nine new schools were opened to teach court reporting -- reversing a
negative trend seen in recent years -- while maintaining high performance
standards and a challenging academic curriculum. Among other helpful
attributes, aspiring court reporters should have an understanding of English
grammar and punctuation, good focus and attention to detail, and a desire to
help and be of service to others.

-- The "Training for Realtime Writers Act" (S. 675 and H.R. 1687) is a bill
that would provide federal support to train more much-needed court reporters
and captioners. The bill has bipartisan support in Congress, with 125 sponsors
in the House of Representatives and 17 in the Senate.

-- Court reporters continue to benefit from the flexibility to use their
skills in a variety of venues. Many experienced court reporters are shifting
from courtroom work to broadcast captioning, to providing interpretive
services for the deaf, or to freelance deposition services.

-- NCRA notes continued strong demand for the services of qualified broadcast
captioners, especially for newscasts covering emergencies or breaking events.
Less reliable captioning techniques used as cost-cutting measures can miss
vital information.

-- NCRA will work to increase the number of states that require certification
or licensure of court reporters. "Nearly half of the states require some sort
of certification for you to do business as a court reporter," Golden said. "We
will continue to push to expand that reach. The work that court reporters
perform is simply too important and too sensitive, and if done poorly will
have too large an impact on members of the public for us to hold ourselves to
anything but the highest standards..."

NCRA is a 23,000-member nonprofit organization representing the judicial
reporting and captioning professions. Members include official court
reporters, deposition reporters, broadcast captioners, providers of real-time
communication access services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people and others
who capture and convert the spoken word into information bases and readable
formats.

SOURCE National Court Reporters Association

Pete Wacht of the National Court Reporters Association, +1-703-556-6272 ext.
169, +1-571-228-7346 (cell), pwacht@ncrahq.org