After Birth
Thursday, 28 April 2011
I just knew this was going to happen. After birther Donald Trump re-raised the conspiracy around the President's birth certificate, President Obama made a special request to the State of Hawaii. He asked the state to make an exception to their privacy policy and release an official copy of his long form birth certificate. This was followed by a flood of emails to me asking for an analysis on whether the document is real. Here is a sample of the emails I have received (with names censored for privacy):
Personally, I think X. nailed it -- he wrote in first and clearly predicted the next dozen emails that I received.
Second, we don't know the history of this PDF document released by the White House. Specifically, we don't know who scanned in the paper document and turned it into a PDF document.
Now, on to the analysis to determine whether there is anything funny with the PDF document released by the White House...
This document itself appears to be a photocopy of a document that was created on his birth. You can see the left edge bending and having an acceptable drift. It appears to have been scanned onto official thatched paper, and then it was rubber-stamped, signed, and dated with the current date. Again: nothing suspicious.
Moreover, this document contains all of the same information found on the previous form, released nearly three years ago. Neither Obama nor Hawaii have changed their story. Everything is consistent. There is nothing suspicious.
The concern about potential tampering comes from the fact that the PDF released by the White House uses a segmented image. The PDF itself contains 9 images: one color JPEG and 8 monochrome bitmaps. These images combine when the PDF document is rendered to display the full image.
The people who think that a segmented image equates to tampering clearly do not know how PDF documents work. The simplest segmentation happens when an alpha channel is used for image transparency. While many of the image formats stored in a PDF file support alpha channels, this isn't how they are usually rendered. Instead, the PDF usually contains two images: one is the image without an alpha channel, and the other is a bitmask containing the alpha channel.
Bitmasks can also be segmented in order to reduce space. For example, if most of the active masked pixels are contained in a 1454x1819 rectangle, but a small section is located outside that rectangle, then the data can be packed more efficiently by segmenting the mask. Although a larger mask could be used, it would really result it a bitmask with significantly more inactive pixels being stored.
An image mask can only store two colors. Usually this is "black" and "white". However, PDFs permit any two colors. It is not uncommon to have one mask store everything "black" on the page, and another store everything that is a specific "gray" color. And remember: by moving these specific, uniform colors into individual bitmasks, it reduces the variation seen in the color JPEG. Less variation means better compression, so the result is a more efficiently compressed document -- in theory. (I added "in theory" because sometimes the full color image would actually be a more efficient storage method. But that's what you get with heuristic encoding systems.)
The birth certificate PDF contains one image (a color JPEG) and eight bitmasks. The main image is PDF object ID 7 0 (ID #7, revision 0) and is 1652x1276. This image looks like the fully rendered image, but it is missing everything that is completely black (mostly black text). The largest bitmask is ID 9 0 and is 1454x1819. When the image is rendered, it is rotated 90-degrees (1819x1454) and masks out the text in the JPEG image. (The image definition actually says "/ImageMask true".) This masking adds the black to the image. (With a PDF mask, one color is ignored and the other identifies where the color should be placed. In this case, the color applied to the mask is black. But don't confuse the black in the mask with the black applied by the mask; one is a color and the other denotes the location to put the color.)
All of these bitmaps are combined in object ID 6 0 to form the full image:
This PDF code says that the main image consists of a color space defined by ID 26 0 ("26 0 R" is a reference to "26 0"; this is basically equivalent to a macro inclusion or function call) and ID 11 0. The color space is how the PDF rendering systems knows what color to apply to each mask. The object then includes a bunch of masks with the main image in layers.
Another question that I expect to be asked: Why aren't all of the letters in the masks? The masks are only monochrome and act like a stencil. A single color is applied based on the masked regions. The fact that some letters are not in the masks shows that the images were scanned in and not everything dark is actually black. There is a significant amount of black, suggesting color correction or possibly OCR-based letter extraction during the scanning or conversion to PDF. I've seen this in other PDF documents, so this does not strike me as odd.
The PDF released by the White House shows no sign of digital manipulation or alterations. I see nothing that appears to be suspicious.
Conspiracy #1: Donald Trump.
Trump tried to show his superiority by publicly releasing his birth certificate. The problem is, he released two documents and they look totally different:
As ABC News pointed out, the first document is not a birth certificate. It is a hospital certificate. Trump corrected this by releasing what he called his "real" birth certificate.
The problem is, the document Trump released is a scaled down version that is difficult to read. This isn't an "exact copy" as the document claims. Why hasn't he released a legible document? Why did he intentionally scale down the image?
Conspiracy #2: Wag the Dog.
I was watching MSNBC this morning and I could not believe how much time the reporters spent on the Obama birth certificate. After wasting over 12 minutes on idiotic commentary, they switched focus to the Royal Wedding.
Royal Wedding? Seriously? I'm in the United States. Didn't we declare our independence because we were tired of their monarchy? Does another royal wedding really matter to me? I mean, he's never going to be my king!
And then it occurred to me... This is just like the baseball steroids scandal. The media is hyperfocusing on bubblegum stories so that we won't notice what congress is doing. Remember: right now our legislatures are debating issues about the national debt. Whatever they decide will directly lead to how our country responds to the current deficit. One would think that a businessman like Donald Trump would be seriously focused on this issue, but he isn't. He is clearly a tool being used to direct focus away from current, critical issues.
Already, anonymous experts are saying that the document is fake. Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in claims from any anonymous source. Some people have already started impersonations in order to give their theories more credibility. For example, Colonel Robert F. Cunningham reportedly sent out a heated email stating that he knows that the document is fake because of the layers in the PDF. The problem is, Colonel Cunningham died nearly 3 months ago. Either someone is impersonating the late Colonel for the credentials, or his ghost has email access. Either way, he does not strike me as an expert in digital document forensics.
Update 2011-05-03 Nathan Goulding has a great write-up for making the Quartz PDFContext library generate a PDF with masks -- just like those seen in this birth certificate. In his example, he is not doing anything fancy or special. He just selects one optimization setting.
X. wrote:
Let the Photoshop conspiracies begin in 5, 4, 3, 2...
L. wrote:
So, I enjoy reading your web site regarding image analysis, was thinking that I'd enjoy your take on http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf
Taking a look myself, I was shocked and amazed by what I found with "vi" (one DCTDecode image extract with "327,1437w temp.jpg") and pdfimages (easiest way to pull out all the other bitmaps). I don't know whether to ascribe this to incompetence or deviousness or both.
I'm looking forward to hear what you think, and to see what appears in the news.
DBA wrote:
The PDF contains nine images. One is a color JPEG image and the other eight are monochrome PBM images. It is a very odd way to assemble a PDF of a birth certificate. (you will see what I mean when you look at the images).
For Windows users: can use "Some PDF Images Extract" to extract the images and IrfanView to view them.
http://www.somepdf.com/some-pdf-image-extract.html
http://www.irfanview.ca/
It's an odd way to construct a PDF of a birth certificate.
M. wrote:
What do you make of the discussion on the web about the Obama long form birth certificate and manipulation of photoshop or acrobat or whatever. Please please please make it stop.
T. wrote:
Please prove once and for all that it is a fake.
Personally, I think X. nailed it -- he wrote in first and clearly predicted the next dozen emails that I received.
Preface
Before I begin, I need to point out two critical items for this evaluation. First, digital document analysis can detect manipulation, but it cannot determine whether the original subject is authentic. The authenticity can only be determined by the State of Hawaii, and they already said that it is authentic.Second, we don't know the history of this PDF document released by the White House. Specifically, we don't know who scanned in the paper document and turned it into a PDF document.
Now, on to the analysis to determine whether there is anything funny with the PDF document released by the White House...
Contents
Let's start with the basics. The document released yesterday contains a signature at the bottom because it is a re-release. As I understand it, most states only issue two "original" birth certificates: one goes to the parents, and one goes to the state. If the parents lose their original, then the state can issue a certificate but not another original. (The states won't give up their original, and the phrase "another original" defeats the purpose of "original".) However, Hawaii made an exception at the President's request and re-issued a new original. Make no mistake: this new document is an original, even if it was not created on the day he was born.This document itself appears to be a photocopy of a document that was created on his birth. You can see the left edge bending and having an acceptable drift. It appears to have been scanned onto official thatched paper, and then it was rubber-stamped, signed, and dated with the current date. Again: nothing suspicious.
Moreover, this document contains all of the same information found on the previous form, released nearly three years ago. Neither Obama nor Hawaii have changed their story. Everything is consistent. There is nothing suspicious.
PDF Documents
The image itself was released as a PDF document. As image analysis goes, I hate PDF files. There is only one way to create a BMP (ignoring different versions). PNG and JPEG files have a little variability, but are mainly limited by the encoding library. But with PDF files, anything goes. Each image in a PDF is given an object ID. The image IDs can be stored as anything from vector graphics to bitmaps or embedded JPEGs. Moreover, images can be segmented or made in layers.The concern about potential tampering comes from the fact that the PDF released by the White House uses a segmented image. The PDF itself contains 9 images: one color JPEG and 8 monochrome bitmaps. These images combine when the PDF document is rendered to display the full image.
The people who think that a segmented image equates to tampering clearly do not know how PDF documents work. The simplest segmentation happens when an alpha channel is used for image transparency. While many of the image formats stored in a PDF file support alpha channels, this isn't how they are usually rendered. Instead, the PDF usually contains two images: one is the image without an alpha channel, and the other is a bitmask containing the alpha channel.
Bitmasks can also be segmented in order to reduce space. For example, if most of the active masked pixels are contained in a 1454x1819 rectangle, but a small section is located outside that rectangle, then the data can be packed more efficiently by segmenting the mask. Although a larger mask could be used, it would really result it a bitmask with significantly more inactive pixels being stored.
An image mask can only store two colors. Usually this is "black" and "white". However, PDFs permit any two colors. It is not uncommon to have one mask store everything "black" on the page, and another store everything that is a specific "gray" color. And remember: by moving these specific, uniform colors into individual bitmasks, it reduces the variation seen in the color JPEG. Less variation means better compression, so the result is a more efficiently compressed document -- in theory. (I added "in theory" because sometimes the full color image would actually be a more efficient storage method. But that's what you get with heuristic encoding systems.)
The birth certificate PDF contains one image (a color JPEG) and eight bitmasks. The main image is PDF object ID 7 0 (ID #7, revision 0) and is 1652x1276. This image looks like the fully rendered image, but it is missing everything that is completely black (mostly black text). The largest bitmask is ID 9 0 and is 1454x1819. When the image is rendered, it is rotated 90-degrees (1819x1454) and masks out the text in the JPEG image. (The image definition actually says "/ImageMask true".) This masking adds the black to the image. (With a PDF mask, one color is ignored and the other identifies where the color should be placed. In this case, the color applied to the mask is black. But don't confuse the black in the mask with the black applied by the mask; one is a color and the other denotes the location to put the color.)
All of these bitmaps are combined in object ID 6 0 to form the full image:
6 0 obj
<< /ProcSet [ /PDF /ImageB /ImageC /ImageI ] /ColorSpace << /Cs2 26 0 R /Cs1 11 0 R >> /XObject << /Im7 20 0 R /Im8 22 0 R /Im9 24 0 R /Im2 9 0 R /Im4 14 0 R /Im1 7 0 R /Im6 18 0 R /Im3 12 0 R /Im5 16 0 R >> >>
endobj
This PDF code says that the main image consists of a color space defined by ID 26 0 ("26 0 R" is a reference to "26 0"; this is basically equivalent to a macro inclusion or function call) and ID 11 0. The color space is how the PDF rendering systems knows what color to apply to each mask. The object then includes a bunch of masks with the main image in layers.
Is this uncommon?
The big question is: why use a bitmask to add black to the image, instead of just rendering the image with black? The answer is: I hate PDF documents. There are an infinite number of ways to store an image in a PDF document, and the PDF encoding system used to create the PDF decided to use this method. This isn't even odd or abnormal. It is strictly dependent on the encoding system and encoding parameters. Even choices like "apply color profile", "optimize for printer", "use this paper size", and "export as PDF" vs "Save as PDF" can seriously tweak how the final PDF is generated; it usually isn't as simple as scaling or recoloring.Another question that I expect to be asked: Why aren't all of the letters in the masks? The masks are only monochrome and act like a stencil. A single color is applied based on the masked regions. The fact that some letters are not in the masks shows that the images were scanned in and not everything dark is actually black. There is a significant amount of black, suggesting color correction or possibly OCR-based letter extraction during the scanning or conversion to PDF. I've seen this in other PDF documents, so this does not strike me as odd.
The PDF released by the White House shows no sign of digital manipulation or alterations. I see nothing that appears to be suspicious.
Look! A brown dog!
However, if you want a conspiracy, allow me to point out a few good ones...Conspiracy #1: Donald Trump.
Trump tried to show his superiority by publicly releasing his birth certificate. The problem is, he released two documents and they look totally different:
As ABC News pointed out, the first document is not a birth certificate. It is a hospital certificate. Trump corrected this by releasing what he called his "real" birth certificate.
The problem is, the document Trump released is a scaled down version that is difficult to read. This isn't an "exact copy" as the document claims. Why hasn't he released a legible document? Why did he intentionally scale down the image?
Conspiracy #2: Wag the Dog.
I was watching MSNBC this morning and I could not believe how much time the reporters spent on the Obama birth certificate. After wasting over 12 minutes on idiotic commentary, they switched focus to the Royal Wedding.
Royal Wedding? Seriously? I'm in the United States. Didn't we declare our independence because we were tired of their monarchy? Does another royal wedding really matter to me? I mean, he's never going to be my king!
And then it occurred to me... This is just like the baseball steroids scandal. The media is hyperfocusing on bubblegum stories so that we won't notice what congress is doing. Remember: right now our legislatures are debating issues about the national debt. Whatever they decide will directly lead to how our country responds to the current deficit. One would think that a businessman like Donald Trump would be seriously focused on this issue, but he isn't. He is clearly a tool being used to direct focus away from current, critical issues.
True Believers
There are many viable conspiracies out there, but Obama's birth certificate really isn't one of them. There are some people who want to believe that Obama is not a citizen so badly, that they will never believe the truth, regardless of how overwhelming the evidence. These people will grasp at straws and see trickery wherever they look. They will use doublespeak and unprovable claims to support their baseless cause. To these people, I can only say: I pity you.Update 2011-04-30: Conspiracies
The latest round of conspiracies concerning this PDF file seem to repeat the same misinformation:- False claim #1: The picture was made in layers so it is fake. As I explained above, the layers are masked elements created by the PDF encoder; it is not an indication of tampering. Moreover, the false claims repeatedly claim that the layers are images. This is incorrect: they are image masks, not images. (The difference is a stencil vs a picture created by using the stencil.) And they are masks that combine to form the image, not independent layers. Finally, if you look at the colored JPEG, you can see a white outline where all of the masks are applied -- so the lettering does exist in both the JPEG and masks. The PDF encoder did not take a blank document and add text to it; it took an existing image and separated it out. As I explained above: this was likely done for OCR processing or to improve the compression rate.
- False claim #2: The PDf was created with an Adobe tool. Some false claims say Photoshop, while others say Adobe Illustrator or some other Adobe program. The truth is seen in the PDF meta data (object IDs 36 0, 33 0, and 1 0): it was created using Apple Preview on a Mac OS X 10.6.7 system. The PDF encoder was "Mac OS X 10.6.7 Quartz PDFContext" (that's the back-end system library on a Mac). No Adobe front-end application was used to create this document. (You can also see this in the way the objects are ordered in the PDF document. Adobe generally writes the object IDs in numerical order. But whatever created this PDF document used prefix numbering and postfix writing to the file. This was not created by an Adobe product.) Statements by the conspirators about how the White House secretary did a poor job with photoshop are lying to you because this government-wage worker never used photoshop.
Already, anonymous experts are saying that the document is fake. Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in claims from any anonymous source. Some people have already started impersonations in order to give their theories more credibility. For example, Colonel Robert F. Cunningham reportedly sent out a heated email stating that he knows that the document is fake because of the layers in the PDF. The problem is, Colonel Cunningham died nearly 3 months ago. Either someone is impersonating the late Colonel for the credentials, or his ghost has email access. Either way, he does not strike me as an expert in digital document forensics.
Update 2011-05-03 Nathan Goulding has a great write-up for making the Quartz PDFContext library generate a PDF with masks -- just like those seen in this birth certificate. In his example, he is not doing anything fancy or special. He just selects one optimization setting.
The background is compressed as JPEG to reduce size and because it does not contain critical content.
There are dials and buttons that control the compression. People generally don't think about what those buttons do and leave them alone. Thus lots of less then optimal PDFs exist.
In particular Apple's PDF generators generally make hugely bloated PDF files (eg. when creating a PDF of a .pages document that has certain types of embedded images or vector drawings). I'm not aware that Apple does or does not have technology to optimize scanned documents, but it does appear as though the PDF creator here is Apple software.
The real issue then (which makes this farce more unbelievable) is that the CIA or whoever, would need to have a huge cover up to hide this whole project and those associated with it. Short of bullets - good luck!
Thank you for your analysis of the PDF of the President's birth certificate. You are right on -- some folks will never accept any amount of evidence and testimony as proof, simply because they do not want to accept.
P.S. There is a typo in your code of conduct -- "tangental" in the final bullet point.
I was looking forward to your comments on the matter.
Question - I think that when the BC arrived it probably was .bmp or .tiff. The people who verified it are professionals and I'd be surprised if there are not any format restrictions with official documents. Could u maybe make a video converting a similar document in .tiff or .bmp with the Quartz PDFContext into a .pdf to see whether u get the layering effect? Maybe this would convince some people on this non issue.
As I understand it, Obama requested multiple PAPER originals. I've heard as many as five for him to hand out so people/media could hold and touch and feel the seal and see the actual signature in ink.
Someone then took one of these paper originals and scanned it in. My own scanner has an option to scan-to-PDF. So scanning the document as a PDF is certainly not odd.
A guy named Nathan Goulding has a great step-by-step for how to make the Quartz PDFContext library generate a PDF with masks -- just like this birth certificate.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/265767/pdf-layers-obamas-birth-certificate-nathan-goulding
In his example, he is not doing anything fancy or special. He just selects one optimization setting.
Exactly. It's another birther meme (read: lie) that Hawaii issued electronic copies to Obama. Issuing electronic copies is the regular process to which Hawaii made an exception in this case.
As for the technical part, isn't it the case that every PDF shows layers when opening in Illustrator? I've seen this in every PDF I've opened so far, no matter the source, so it seems Illustrator is doing its own separation of contents (for whatever purpose).
> they might have knowingly published BC in a conspiracy prone format
Interesting thought.
No he didn't. He doesn't mention Quartz once, and the passport2.pdf PDF document provided by him has the PDF producer left blank.
With the paper BCs the registrar at the Health Dept enters the "Date filed" and assigns the registration number. All copies are made from that document or the data entered from it (whether they are actual photocopies like Obama's latest or they are aggregates of digitized data like Obama's short form).
The only BCs hospitals give out are the souvenir ones that often have footprints on them. In most states, parents must apply to the state or county for an official copy.
I did mean "who". As in the person who scanned it in. Was this person part of the White House, the State of Hawaii, some other government entity, a contractor, or an intern? We also don't know where it was scanned in or the specific software configuration used.
However, we do know the "what". The PDF says it was created with Apple Preview on a Mac OS X 10.6.7 system. The PDF encoder was "Mac OS X 10.6.7 Quartz PDFContext".
Knowing the "what" tells us most of the "how". Knowing the "who" would tell us more about possible motivation. For example, if the "who" was a web admin, then the color optimization that created the layers was likely done to reduce bandwidth. (Every bit counts when you have millions of people downloading the document.) On the other hand, perhaps it was optimized by a contractor for an email attachment -- maybe the 'who' did not even know that it would be released publicly and, had they known, they would have chosen a higher quality format for the release. Or maybe it was a new intern who didn't know better and just used whatever settings were last used on the computer...
Hospitals typically issue a certificate, called a "souvenir" in the industry, for parents, but it in no way resembles the official certificate. Losing this souvenir is of no legal consequence since it's not a legal birth certificate. If a parent wants a legal real birth certificate, they have to get it from the state, whether the child is a newborn or an adult.
I worked with Vital Statistics for decades before I retired, so I know this stuff. Nowadays, there is no original at all since virtually all births the US are reported electronically to hospitals to the state. They still issue the souvenirs.
When my grandson was born a few months back I was in the hospital room when the souvenir was presented, and they called a "souvenir" and gave the parents a form to order the real thing from the state.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/55642721/News-Release-Legal-proof-that-President-Obama%E2%80%99s-Certificate-of-Live-Birth-is-a-forgery
Both Dr. Krawetz and his thesis are being attacked (of course) by "birthers."
The latest attack on the pdf birth certificate is that some of the elements appear to have been cut and pasted. For example, two of check boxes in BOX 4. If Twin or Triplet, appear to identical on a pixel level. This occurs when you view the pdf from the White house website without saving it to your hard drive. There are a number of other examples, of letters in names or titles that are identical.
I have read that this is related to the loss of data when a large file is compressed to a smaller file. Is that possible?
Remember: the boxes are created by monochrome masking. They have been converted (optimized) from a full-color JPEG into a monochrome bitmap. The optimization could certainly cause very similar looking boxes to be optimized into boxes that appear identical. Not suspicious.
The people who are claiming that these artifacts and optimizations are suspicious have never tried to recreate the optimization. They should really test their theories before blurting them as a conspiracy.
However, I am wondering whether these "identical" elements really are identical. I don't have a copy of Adobe Illustrator, but I do have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard. I asked it to export all of the images from the Obama long form PDF. It dumped out three JPG files of differing resolutions (there are no "settings" in this export process to control resolution or file format). The file with most of the typing was http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/birth-certificate-long-form_Page_1_Image_0002.jpg. Even without zooming it clearly shows the letter "B" in OBAMA is different between father and son. If one just zooms in with Acrobat Reader on the PDF, they are the same and I am told that if they are saved with Adobe Illustrator at 300 ppi then are the same too.
So my dilemma is knowing whether the export from Acrobat or the save from Illustrator represents the actual contents of the bitmap in the file. My thought is that some algorithmic process might reduce two different images and make them identical, but it wouldn't take two identical images and make them different.
She interprets the effects of the optimization as tampering.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=316749
But I did want to point out a slight error in your information pertaining to the HDOH validating Obama's BC. The HDOH has indeed vouched for the fact that Obama was born there and the fact that they have his "documentation" on file. However, they have never validated that what Obama showed a couple months ago is the same document that they have.
The theory, and again this is just a theory, is that his grandparents took advantage of the lax rules in HI and registered the birth in Hawaii as a home birth...even if it took place elsewhere. This would result in a totally valid BC being generated. In fact, the short-form would show the exact info that Obama's short-form showed. The difference would be the long-form. Instead of listing a hospital it would list a home birth and who witnessed it. Which would lead to a he said/she said for Presidential eligibility. That is why the authenticity of the long-form is so important. And I look forward to your analysis to see if it answers ALL of the issues. So far is seems to be the best I've seen.
In terms of the HDOH statements, if they do have a BC on file, even if it was generated via fraudulent statements...then all of their statements are true, but still potentially don't prove Obama was born in Hawaii. That is the issue at hand.
HDOH has a link on their website to the White House PDF. Why would they do that if it did not match?
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
"On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth."
Also, I don't think more than 2 or 3 people have ever even actually seen Obama's real original document within the HDOH. Isn't it possible that, because the HDOH knows they released a copy, that they assume that is what he posted? The only people I know who have seen that doc are the female HDOH employee who has made public statements, Abercrombie and Linda Lingle.
As to the statement by the DOH, stop moving the goalposts. Remember how the birthers parsed Dr. Fukino's statements and Gov. Lingle's statement at some point you need to accept the fact that everyone is not carefully crafting their statements to avoid culpability. The people at the DOH think like normal rational people, not conspiracy nuts.
As to the DOH and WND, I imagine that after they have been called liars, traitors, and co-conspirators, the DOH may have lost patience with birthers.
I agree that this iteration of the doc was saved by Quartz PDFContext and not by an Adobe product. Does that rule out the possiblity that an earlier version of this doc was created in Adobe though? Just curious.
Also, can you provide more info about Quartz PDFContext and what that tells us about how this PDF was generated please?
OCR can't be an explanation though, as none of the text within this PDF is selectable and there is no character map assocaited with the file. Furthermore, when you try to run OCR on it...it informs you that is has NOT been run on this doc before.
Also, I see no explanation for the other abnormalities. 1)Kerning 2)Letters that are identical down to the pixelation 3) Misspelling in the 'official' HDOH stamp. 4) A hidden 'E' printed below the 'A' in Alvin Onaka's signature which creates the profile of a smiley face. Show me another valid HI BC with these abnormalities and you might have a convert. But so far you've only addressed half of the issues and haven't demonstrated the proof.
Up until that point, Obama had only released his short-form..which isn't his actual hospital-generated BC. I've explained before that a fraudulently registered home birth would result in a "valid" BC..since the short-form doesn't list hospital info, etc...we wanted more proof. The media claimed that we already had the proof and was failing to see the distinction between short-form and long-form certs and the info included in them.
So Trump punked the media and released only a short-form at first...knowing that they would jump all over him for it's lack of complete validity even though they completely gave Obama a pass and actually confused the issue with misleading statements for him. Voila...the media says, "hey that's not a hospital generated BC" and as such are punked.
It was actually very smart of Trump and truly reveals the double standard here.
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
That's the one that starts "On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth." and links to the White House page containing the 2011 PDF.
No mistake. I meant to link to information about the 2008 document. This shows that it was confirmed as existing and authentic by Hawaii long before he requested copies for release in 2011.
A better link is on the page you identified:
http://hawaii.gov/health/about/pr/2008/08-93.pdf
This is the official statement that says a real document exists. At this point, it doesn't matter what is in the photos, scans, and pictures that are released. The only requirement is for a document to exist, and Hawaii says it exists. (And technically, the document doesn't even need to exist. Many presidents were not born in hospitals and didn't have official birth certificates.)
The POTUS requirement is to be a US citizen (and not naturalized citizen). There is no requirement to release a birth certificate or make it public. (Where's the birth certificate for George Bush? The other George Bush? Ford? Reagan's birth certificate wasn't made public until they established his presidential library -- years after he was president.) The conspirators have made up this fictional requirement that the birth certificate must be publicly released -- as if the public has some magical way to authenticate and differentiate a photo of real birth certificate from a picture of a piece of paper.
In my own analysis, I focus on the forgery claims. I can tell if a document has been tampered, and neither the 2008 nor the 2011 has been edited as the conspirators claim. However, as I have repeatedly stated, I have no means to authenticate the subject matter represented in the online documents. For authentication, I -- and everyone else -- must rely on someone who has the means to authenticate it, and that is the State of Hawaii. As already noted, Hawaii publicly announced that they authenticated that a real document exists in 2008. There are even statements that the document released in 2008 looks like the one that the state has on file. (See the various citations at http://mediamatters.org/research/200808150001 and http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/.) QED.
Although you did find a better link, I have no desire to edit this blog entry. Any edits will only be seen by conspirators as my sudden change of opinion. My opinion and findings have not changed. (Although I will consider correcting spelling errors if you notice any.)
You indicated, "The POTUS requirement is to be a US citizen (and not naturalized citizen)."
You are incorrect. The US Constitution clearly states, "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."
I logically suspect that the scrutiny placed on Obama and his origins was absent the other US Presidents that you cite simply because of the fact that the parents of Reagan, Ford, Bush 41, and Bush 43 were all born in the United States. There simply is no question as to their eligibility for the Office of President.
I find it humorous that you say "You are incorrect" and then immediately say the same thing I said.
You should look up the definition of a "naturalized citizen" -- this is a citizen of a country who was not born a citizen of that country. If you're not born in a different country than your citizenship, then you are a "natural born citizen".
That second clause, "or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution" only applies to the first few Presidents since -- when the country was founded -- nobody was a natural born citizen.
The rest of what you wrote should be debated by experts in constitutional law, and not backseat pundits or people with twisted birther logic.
"That second clause, "or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution" only applies to the first few Presidents since -- when the country was founded -- nobody was a natural born citizen."
Sorry, I know this isn't a Constitutional theory website.
But this a debatable statement. There is a theory that on July 4th, 1776, "natural born subjects" became "natural born citizens" by joining in the Revolution.
The grandfather clause would have been written to provide for people like James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton and other Founders who were not born (natural born) in the colonies.
I suggest you do the same, since your implication suggests that you do not understand the distinction.
A naturalized citizen is one where the United States grants citizenship to a foreign national. The foreign national must apply for citizenship, take a test, renounce their former citizenship, and pledge to accept US citizenship. After becoming a citizen through naturalization, the person has all of the rights of a US citizen -- EXCEPT the right to become President.
This was exception was explicitly put in to prevent a foreign spy from gaining control of this country, or a foreign aristocrat from attempting to form another monarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born_citizen
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis
Of course, the side effect is that naturalized citizens like Arnold Schwarzenegger can become governor of California Schwarzenegger(permitted to any citizen) but can never become President.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arnold-schwarzenegger-wan_n_558275.html
In contrast, a natural born citizen is identified as a person who does not need to apply for citizenship because he already has it. There are two ways to become a natural born citizen:
(A) Be born in the United States.
(B) Be born to a parent who is United States citizens. (See the Naturalization Act of 1790, which states that "the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens."
(Technically, there is a third option where a citizen of a land that becomes part of the United States is automatically a natural born citizen. But since Obama was born in 1961 and Hawaii became a state two years earlier, in 1959, this doesn't apply.)
While the birthers try to question whether Obama was born in the United States, I find it ironic that none have questioned his mother's citizenship. Regardless of where he was born, his mother was a US citizen. Therefore, he is a US citizen and a natural born citizen. This is the same reason that McCain could run for President even though he was born outside the United States; his parents were US citizens.
But then again, Earle, I suspect that you don't know or don't care. And you probably won't even read this reply. But thanks for writing in and letting everyone know how stupid you are. You can go back to your make-believe world now; I'm sure those voices are friendlier to you.
So How does the AP have a version without some of the background? The left edge clearly has some security background, but the rest does not. Moreover, how does the AP version, which is on paper so thin you can see the short form behind it in the scan, lack the embossed seal which the White House pdf shows?--- IMPOSSIBLE!
I agree completely with your analysis of the reasons for the existence of the layers. What you have stated was quite obvious from the day the PDF was released. It is easily repeated with a little experimentation.
I'm wondering if you have taken a look at the out of gamut pixels shown on the document in Photoshop. If you mask out all but the out of gamut pixels with a black background an interesting pattern emerges. Any out of gamut pixels that appear on the security background produced by scanning should be consistent in there density and distribution throughout the document. They are not. There also seems to be a close correlation between these pattern differences and areas that show evidence of pixel averaging or blurring. I am curious to hear your opinion on this.
"Gamut pixels"? Are you talking about the "Gamut proof" function under Photoshop, which highlights two spots on the top portion of the color JPEG background?
If that's what you're talking about, then you can see the spots easier if you apply a color histogram to the image. (The histogram should make them appear as dark streaks.) They are artifacts caused by a physical flat-bed scanner. Specifically, the glass/plastic on the scanner has some warping or fogging. This is very common for old scanners (and cheap scanners). It's hard to distinguish glass/plastic warping from fogging. Basically, (as I understand it) there are some screws holding the glass in place. After time, they cause some warping. The screw holes can also let in moisture, causing fogging. If it is plastic, then the act of holding something down while scanning can also cause it. Both warping and fogging will cause a darkening in the areas near the screws because the scanner's head cannot see through it as well.
My old UMAX scanner had 3 spots like this along the starting edge. This picture has 2 on the top and one on the left. The 2 on top likely identifies the starting edge. The one of the left is probably from people wresting their hands/arms on the scanner while scanning. (It suggests that the lid opens up with a hinge on the right side of the paper, and the scanner moves from right-to-left -- relative to a person standing at the scanner and facing the hinge.)
If this is what you're talking about, then it is pretty conclusive that the document was scanned in on a flat-bed scanner.
If that isn't what you're talking about, then can you provide more detail about what you mean by "Gamut pixels"? (The Gamut is just the color space...)
The 2 areas that you mentioned along the top are easily seen. But in addition this same type of thing is seen inside and specifically outside the boundaries of the original form data. It is also seen in and around the registrars stamp and to a lesser degree around the date stamp.
The pixel averaging in all the areas mention is identical, even in the 2 areas that you mentioned could be attributed to glass warping.
It seems to me that since these 'out of gamut' pixels are actually very pale shades of green, they should be seen consistently wherever the security background is visible. Especially since the background is an original that was only scanned, never printed.
Here is a link to a screen capture.
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9jb6ttPeRxSMzRmMmJjNDEtM2IxNC00Zjg1LTgwYjgtZGNiNzI2NjUzNTUx&sort=name&layout=list&num=50
I know you are probably tired of this stuff, but I was wondering if you have seen this "experts" report. And if you could explain what he is talking about?
http://www.wnd.com/files/2011/07/110726whitedots.pdf
As a lapsed digital artist, I just wanted to say that it is a delight to see your work. I appreciate the care you take explaining your process and your analysis to a remarkably broad audience. Please keep up the good work.
Such a work flow process has been tested by printing a color copy of the LFBC and scanning it on a Xerox Workcentre to PDF format. So far both a WorkCentre Model 7655 and 7535 have been tested this way and the results are very similar.
A blogger going by “NBC†has done a lot of work on this and I have helped a bit since I had access to the model 7535 Xerox. NBC also discovered that the President and First Lady’s tax returns that were posted on the White House web site the same month that th LFBC was released show the PDF Creator was a “Xerox Workcentre 7655â€. The Creator of the LFBC was Preview but the additional step of rotating an accidental upside down scan to right side up in Preview would explain the meta data in the LFBC PDF.
Another clue that lead to the Xerox as the source was a comment string in the 8 bit background layer of the PDF of “YCbCrâ€. The comment is not needed for anything but could be a leftover from coding the MRC algorithm by the programmer. So far it has been found in every PDF known to have originated on a Xerox Workcentre.
Some of the so-called signs of forgery that have been explained by this work flow process are
1. The existence of a single JPEG layer (color) containing mostly the background and multiple monochrome bit masks containing mostly text (MRC Compression).
2. The ability to open the document in Adobe Illustrator and move around objects separately.
3. Separate monochrome layers for the date stamp and Alvin Onaka’s seal.
4. Existence of a background color layer at 150 ppi resolution and monochrome layers at 300 ppi
5. Scaling of the layers (48% and 24%).
6. Images are rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
7. The creation of pixel for pixel identical letters and shapes via JBIG2.
8. The white border.
9. The double clipping mask.
10. White holes in the background layer where text was lifted (x-ray).
11. The PDF contains an embedded JPEG which contains a JPEG comment ‘YCbCr’ fouind in every Workcentre PDF examined so far.
12. The PDF contains an embedded JPEG which contains identical quantization matrices to the test files.
13. The alignment of two sides of the foreground images with 8 bit boundaries in a 300 ppi layer
14. The alignment of two sides of the foreground images touching the internal objects.
15. Solid – Speckled blocks in both the LFBC PDF and the test document PDF.
I have several articles on my blog about this. This one is a summary http://rcradioblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/xerox-for-dummies/
You can download copies of the test files there.
NBC has many articles and detailed technical information on his blog http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/
Meanwhile Mike Zullo the head of Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse is trying to convince members of Congress to open an investigation into the President’s long form birth certificate, which he calls “100% forgedâ€.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/18/president-obama-and-vice-president-biden-s-tax-returns-and-tax-receipts