Companies that outsource the processing of sensitive financial or medical data know they need to overcome customer concerns about protection against inadvertent disclosures. In the coming year, they could face additional legal obstacles as well. In the first week of January, California state Sen. Liz Figueroa plans to introduce legislation to prohibit confidential medical information and tax returns from being sent abroad, says Elizabeth Fenton, the senator's chief of staff. The proposal stems from an incident in October when a woman doing medical transcriptions in Pakistan threatened to post on the Web data related to patients of the University of California's San Francisco Medical Center. She claimed a subcontractor hadn't paid her for her work.
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