UPDATE: Report confirmed as hoax, Link to BB update.
Here’s the original Boing Boing post, and here’s yesterday’s batch of update links.
Today, Boing Boing reader Gary McGath, a software engineer with the Harvard University Library, writes:
Just to add more confusion to the situation of Homeland Security and the unidentified UMass Dartmouth student: in a reader comment on a previous BB post, Jessamyn West reported that the Mao book “was from a library in nearby Providence.” But SouthCoastToday is now saying it came from UMass Amherst — Link.
A random stranger on a train told me that UMass Dartmouth does use SSN for student ID and claimed they’d issued a press release acknowledging that. I can’t find any such press release on Google news, though.
Anonymous says,
Note that the UMass Dartmouth Library Dean states that her library did not process the interlibrary loan. It went through another library — they were not involved. Note also that neither the reporter nor the professors ever seemed to try to verify any part of the story with the UMass Dartmouth Library or with Homeland Security for that matter. Neither people professionals at research bothered to even try to do the research for the facts. Odd, very odd. This is aside from the unlikely elements requested in the so-called form…like the SSN. Link.
N.Pepperell says,
The followup quotes some very skeptical DHS and FBI staff, and indicates that neither the student nor the student’s parents have agreed to speak directly with Nicodemus. Link to blog post with more analysis.
reader Laura Prickett says,
So — i spent some time at the UMass Amherst branch, and did a little ILL myself…
Until a few years ago, most ID numbers at UMass Amherst, and i suspect the other branches, were your social. If you wanted to, you could throw a fit and they’d give you a non-SSN number. Maybe three years ago they swapped to random ID numbers. Incoming freshmen didn’t know their socials, but knew their ID numbers. upperclassmen didn’t know their ID numbers, but only their SSN. I worked computer helpdesk there during the transition, and got used to accepting either number
— it was a massive headache. When I graduated the system had pretty much gone on to ID#s only, and only upperclassmen were still using their socials. Anyone with an ID card maybe prior to fall 2002 still would have their SSN, and not their other random ID.UMass Dartmouth’s ILL request page
(Link) asks for the UMass ID — so if they have an old-school ID it could be a social. WIth the umass amherst one, at least, they had you enter it once and then kept it on file FOREVER…
Beth Mahon adds,
I’m a grad student at UMass Boston, and I know that their ID system just changed over from SSNs to random numbers last semester, and they rolled out a new online student data system to go with the change (see link here.) New ID numbers were mailed out to existing students in October or November. If you look at this website, it indicates that UMass Dartmouth changed over their system during the spring semester. They might have just changed their IDs as well, and, like the Amherst school, they may not have made existing students change over their IDs.