A lot of people are stepping out to defend 4chan, but the article isn't about 4chan. It's a detail in the story.<p>The story is that someone close to the situation leaked details in violation of HIPAA on an internet message board.<p>And from a correctional facility, no less. The whole thing is a mess.<p><i>edit: spelling</i>
This really shows the value of anonymity on the internet. Buzzfeed may try to label 4chan a “haven for far-right trolls and white nationalists” but it’s exactly the type of platform we need right now. It’s at the very least a check on mainstream media, which has proven itself very untrustworthy.
It was predicted by almost everyone that he would die somehow before revealing whatever information he may have had, so it was not surprising in the least. Further, 4chan is not a secret club -- you go to the site and you can create however many threads you wish, and reply to whoever, however, and however many times you want, no registration or signup process exists, so it's not surprising that Epstein's death, conspiracies of which run rampant on 4chan, would be leaked randomly by someone involved in dealing with the situation, it happens all the time actually.
For those that don't read the article, someone posted about the medical response to Epstein's suicide on 4Chan before the news picked it up. A lot of people had access to that information at the time.
> We looked at the information provided by [a BuzzFeed News] reporter<p>Buzzfeed is worried about HIPAA violations. Good thing to worry about in general, but perhaps this is not the best case to champion that cause...<p>They could look into the type of plea deal he got previously and why he got it. Or, say, comb through all the recently unsealed evidence and compile a spreadsheet of who flew to his island and how often. Now, that would make some good investigative reporting.
Unclear to me why people seem to think that a major station announcing something that they got (very generally) from some official release makes the same info (obtained some other way) nefarious in nature. Could be as simple as someone at the prison who saw what happened (employee or guard) and relaying it to someone by cell phone. I would find it hard to believe that doing so would break a law that would involve a significant penalty or risk. For that matter even the ME office driver (or whatever was used) might have had early wind of what was going on and relayed it to a third party. Who cares? I am sure they don't sign NDA's for this type of thing.
This was posted on HN yesterday, but was flagged for some reason. Does anyone know why? <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20687284" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20687284</a>
4chan is basically a million monkeys on typewriters, so it's unsurprising they've managed to predict the death of Epstein. Let's not forget that every man and his dog on reddit and elsewhere immediately predicted this guy would get suicided. It was as predictable as the tide going in and out.