Sorry, I dont believe this for one second. You mean to tell me that this person was given an assignment to "de-annonymize" someone in public, and then coincidentally runs into someone at a coffee shop who very loudly provides:
1. Name
2. Address
3. CC Number
4. PWD's to accounts
While on a phone call, at a coffee shop?!
The professor, the NY Times, and NPR, are all fools if they believe this way too convenient series of events. gauranteed if this "guy in a coffee shop" is even real, he has some connection to the student.
I sat behind someone in business class on the Eurostar who was a C-level exec at another company. He was on the phone with a client and reassuring them that they took data security seriously, used VPNs and safes and FDE etc. He left his laptop unlocked when he went to the toilet, with (what looked like, I didn't snoop) a fairly confidential spreadsheet open.
We both worked in an infosec related industry. He was a c-level exec of a direct competitor. I fully believe this story.
In my country I see quite often that people throw away documents which have their personal number (analogue to SSN), their name and address on it. Mostly people don't even bother tearing these documents into pieces.
Using this data I could do anything I want with their lives - order stuff in their names, arrange/cancel appointments with officials, register/deregister their cars, phone subscriptions, even deregister them from their addresses.
I hear this sort of thing so often, the probability of it happening once during spring break (which I presume is several weeks) would be pretty high, if it were me.
While on a phone call, at a coffee shop?!
The professor, the NY Times, and NPR, are all fools if they believe this way too convenient series of events. gauranteed if this "guy in a coffee shop" is even real, he has some connection to the student.