From U.S. v. Russell, decided Tuesday by Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz, joined by Judges Robert King and Stephanie Thacker:
Before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, … [i]n January 2019, employees at George Washington University Hospital discovered a Twitter post that revealed information about Justice Ginsburg's recent visits to the hospital. The post contained a screenshot of the hospital's patient search screen, which highlighted Justice Ginsburg's name and showed the dates of ten visits, along with medical services she received (which included radiology, oncology, and surgery services)….
Law enforcement later learned that before circulating on Twitter, the screenshot was posted on the anonymous message board 4Chan. It appeared on a thread titled "Politically Incorrect," where users promoted a conspiracy theory that Justice Ginsburg had died and prominent Democrats were covering up her death.
The hospital's Chief Information Officer, Nathan Read, investigated the leak. He obtained search logs for anyone who had used the hospital's system to look for patients with last names starting with "Ginsb" in the relevant time frame….
Read's … search parameters revealed that a non-hospital issued device, operating under Russell's username, searched for "Gins" on January 7, 2019. That search was sandwiched between two others. Seconds before, the same device searched for "Barker," and seconds after, it searched for "Ginston." Barker was a hospital patient, but the hospital had no record of ever serving someone with the last name Ginston.
