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.