The Dartmouth Student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security over an Interlibrary Loan request has confessed to making up the entire story.
No motive was offered for this bizzare tale, and sadly, in my personal view there is no way the student can be prosecuted for this lie that will be used to discredit legitimate concerns about domestic spying. Unless he told his story to law enforcement personnel, there are no statutes that have been violated.
But hopefully his university will take some action. Whether its mandatory counselling, explusion or a defamation suit, I don’t know. But truth should count for something.
While the comments above are strictly my own, I think I speak for all FGI volunteers when I say we don’t apologize for posting the original story. Both James R. and I (in comments) indicated that this story might not be true but would be worrisome if it was. Without the international media attention, this story might never have been exposed as a lie.
Which is why we at FGI are for as much public government information as possible. Only through information and analysis can governments be held accountable to their people.
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I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but are we sure that the student didn’t get “another visit” telling him to recant?