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Paranoia begets paranoia. When the government engages secret investigations with few restraints, any story about abusive investigations becomes plausible. But not all such stories are true, and we have to keep a reasonable level of skepticism.
When I first read this story, I found it alarming. It reports that a UMass Dartmouth student requested a copy of Mao's Little Red Book on interlibrary loan, and subsequently got a visit from federal agents because the book is on a "watch list." I got into three separate discussions of this story: on Wendy McElroy's discussion board, on LiveJournal, and on a science fiction mailing list.
Shortly after my initial outrage, it occurred to me that there are dubious points about the story. The student doesn't name himself, thus making verification difficult. What we have are the reports of two professors, whom the student might have hoaxed. The report says that he had to give his Social Security number on the interlibrary loan form; but this is implausible. SSN's generally aren't required for interlibrary loans unless the school uses the SSN as a student ID, which UMass Dartmouth doesn't. Third, it's odd that a book by Mao would raise red flags in 2005, with Communism no longer being a major concern of national security forces.
UMass Dartmouth is investigating the story. The Progressive quotes the following statement:
At this point, it is difficult to ascertain how Homeland Security obtained the information about the students' [sic] borrowing of the book. The UMass Dartmouth library has not been visited by agents of any type seeking information about the borrowing patterns or habits of any of its patrons and did not handle the request for the book in question. The student has indicated that another university library processed the request.
That article says that Prof. Williams "says that the news of the snooping, which he says may have been by the FBI instead of Homeland Security, has cast a pall." So the student went to an unspecified library to get the loan (why did he not use his own university library?) and was visited by agents who apparently didn't show any ID.
A variant of the story has popped up, with the locale changed to California. This version is definitely a hoax. That doesn't prove the original was a hoax, of course; legends can grow around true stories. But at this point the UMass Dartmouth story sounds very dubious.
Tags: libraries, homeland security, massachusetts
3 comments:
Thanks... what a great demonstration of the power of blogs.
Until recently, UMD did use the SSN information as part of the student ID card.
My UMASS Pass certainly does have my SSN on it, and I think this just changed this year with the implementation of the COIN system. If this student has been around for longer than a semester, he has one of the older UMass pass ID cards. With SSN.
So, the fact that UMassD no longer collects SSN for the student ID is irrelevant to the veracity of the story, unless you know the student has an SSN-free ID card, or you know for certain that officials did not have access to that information.
That said, I can't say for certain that the library actually uses the SSN as part of interlibrary loan, since I have never used the interlibrary loan at our university.
JP Burke: A reader on BoingBoing confirms that SSN was used till recently. The student has been described as a senior, which means he probably got his ID at least 3 years ago.
Other questions still remain to be resolved, and may never be if the student doesn't speak out in person.
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