Ken Colburn founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services & Data Forensics Labs had his technical staff look at the White House birth certificate PDF.
It is unfortunate that Colburn didn’t really understand what the Arizona Cold Case Posse said in its own investigation of the birth certificate, and for that reason most what Colburn said doesn’t really apply. However, Colburn did scan a real birth certificate (something the Cold Case Posse didn’t) using commercial-grade equipment and his staff found something that I think sheds a lot of light onto the reasons we see all these amateurs claiming a forgery:
Colburn: When I first saw it it was very convincing until we did our test and saw that, wait a minute, our scanner does the same thing.
He says “no smoking gun.” I don’t put much stock in this particular report myself because it’s non-specific and Mr. Colburn appears to be giving his report second hand.
Nothing changes the fact that there is no test in the world that anyone can do on an image posted on the internet that can establish anything at all about the authenticity of the actual physical document that the image depicts.
Duh.
I agree that one probably couldn’t rule a document authentic base on a picture, but you could certainly rule one a fake. A handwriting expert, for example, could look at an image and conclude that the signature doesn’t match known signatures of the person. And one could detect alteration of a document if some of the letters of a word were in a different font than other letters. I don’t mean the blobby images that Paul Irey looked at, but the relatively clean ones from John McCains’s certificate.
My impression is that Colburn didn’t know much about what his staff actually did beyond some highlights. What he said in the main was that it is normal for a document to have layers and he mistakenly thought that the cold case posse objected to the document because it had layers.
It find it truly ironic that initially birthers said that the birth certificate was a fake because it had layers, and now they say it’s a fake because it doesn’t have enough layers.
Yes, they have cleverly staked out both ends of the number line, while leaving themselves an infinite amount of wiggle room. They can still say any number of objects/groups/layers greater than 1 but less than infinity fails to pass their ironclad test.
PS – even more ironic because, if Zullo was referring to the way PDF files place editable text in tiny bits of random length … a big assumption, but what else could he be referring to (if he even knows!) … if you open such a PDF in Illustrator … the birthers own selected method for “forensically” examining PDFs (stop laughing!) …. all those bits of text will be on the same layer.
Lots of different text boxes on the same layer.
Just sayin’. Perhaps birthers should get terminology straight? Nah, so long as the seill keep s the marks sufficiently innoculated against the truth, it serves their purpose.
And who wants to explain the concept of “text boxes” to birthers. Yeesh.
Also, if any 2 examples of a given letter look too different or look too alike, that means it’s a forgery. Also, if the registration #s are too close to other births from the same time or too far apart.
I looked at the Data Doctors web site. Their expertise appears to be computer repair and recovering data from corrupted or damaged hard drives and USB drives. I was not impressed with his analysis albeit he is correct in his conclusion that the work of the CCP was shoddy and inconclusive at best. John Woodman is light years ahead of this guy.
It’s the usual Wingnut Goldilock’s Rule that goes into effect whenever a Democrat wins the White House.
I still don’t see how it would be initially convincing to anyone who actually knows what theyre looking at. His statement says a lot about his expertise, but at least he was curious enough to actually test his initial belief.
The dude is a self-taught computer repair and data recovery expert who founded his own business and got himself a radio show. He is probably very good at what he does, but he is not a forensic documents expert. I looked at his Linkedin profile and it makes clear that he has no education or training in that field, no certification by professional bodies, and has taken no continuing education courses that are required of forensic document examiners to maintain their certification.
So, wrong guy, wrong area of expertise retained to look at the wrong item in controversy (the scan, not the original document).
No, you couldn’t. Not under the rules of evidence, anyway. And certainly not in a situation where, as in this case, the public officials involved have repeatedly affirmed the authenticity of the actual document.
Congratulations, you’ve just described every single birther “expert” (with the possible exception of Susan Lines, who directly said that she couldn’t tell whether or not it was a forgery). None of the birther “experts” have had any training in questioned document examination. None of them have any sort of certification in either Questioned Document examination, or Computer Forensics.
I’m really interested in hearing their explanation about why Obama felt he needed to forge a birth certificate in the first place. After all, the entire government of the state of Hawaii must be “in” on the conspiracy, since they have publicly and repeatedly attested to the authenticity of the posted birth certificates and the information contained in them.
So if they’re “in” on the conspiracy, why did Obama have to forge anything in the first place?
I suspect that’s because a genuine forensic document examiner would say you can’t form conclusions about an actual document without being able to examine said document. Looking at a picture of it from the internet isn’t even close to the same thing.
I think that is pretty much what Ivan Zatkovich told WND.
Don’t confuse the birthers with pesky things like “logic” and “common sense.” It upsets them.
I’d just note for the sake of accuracy that this is just a local news piece from Phoenix, and that USA Today had nothing to do with the production. They’re just hosting the video on their website.
What remains amusing about all this is how our good Sheriff and his cold case posse could ever conclude that a document that they have never actually physically inspected is a forgery. Even more amusing is knowing that that ole Joe could have gotten his questions answered with one simple telephone call to the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Hawaii. Yet for some reason he failed to do this.
What does that tell us about Joe Arpaio’s motivation?
Well – of course the posse members know that the State of Hawaii’s Attorney General’s office is in on the conspiracy and are not to be trusted. That’s why they never contacted them.
Same goes for the Hawaii Dept of Public Health. That’s why they never contacted them with a request for a letter of verification.
Or the Governor’s office. That’s why they never contacted his office for clarification on what he meant when he said he couldn’t produce the birth certificate.
Or NBC News reporter Savannah Guthrie or any other reporter who was at the press conference. They’ll just lie to the posse in order to protect Obama.
Or the Selective Service System. Of course since Obama was in office, they would protect him and a FOIA request for a clean copy of Obama’s Selective Service records would be faked. That’s why they relied on a fuzzy looking scan of a photocopy of questionable provenance rather than asking for a fresh photocopy from the SSS with different settings for improved readability.
You see, nobody is to be trusted except for Sheriff Joe and his posse. That’s why they never did anything that would be normal operating procedure for any law enforcement agency, which is to contact other government agencies for cooperation in the investigation.
Your exactly right y_p_w. Sheriff Arpaio is in a bind because he is having trouble finding a TRUSTWORTHY entity to continue his investigation. Based on all available information, Hawaii is most likely lying and will not cooperate in any way. Other federal agencies have Obama appointees which will also not cooperate. It is a grand conspericy and cover up to protect Obama. No doubt.
There are so many strains and vectors of PDF madness …. who could trace them all. Call the CDC, stat!
There are those who insist there is no paper document. The the PDF is it. How you would prove the non-existence of a paper document based on an image presented as a scan of said document is beyond me. It would be a logical impasses except for the existence of other images, representing the same document, which read the same, and which, for various technical reasons, can be demonstrated to not have originated from the PDF. So there is a common ancestor, reasonable to assume a paper document.
Whether forged or not who can say. The ancestor could be a fabricated digital file, or a fabricated paper document. Except the State of Hawaii says they supplied a paper document … and the images resemble what Hawaii supplied. And if Hawaii supplied it, how can it be a forgery? Either an inside job or the state was misled! … that’s right, a superconspiracy!
Coming back to reality …. the whole of PDF Madness is indeed smoke and mirrors. Smear artists getting the rabble worked over the idea that the Ebil Kenyan Socialist Marxist Communist Homicidal Homosexual Alinskyite* is mocking their (faux) concerns with a cartoon on the internet.
Booga-booga.
Nevermind that the PDF can be explained. No one wants to hear that. Too dull.
Remember the whole Bush National Guard papers thing? Draw your own parallels and conclusions from the differences between the handling of these “document scandals”. 😉
________
Holy moly you are rediculous. Boo-hoo, the shurriff can’t find someone “trustworthy” enough to listen to his rants and lies. Of course you have no proof or evidence of Hawaii “lieing” about anything, but it sure is a swell overused talking point with your ilk.
yeh, it’s all a “grand conspiracy” that somehow only YOU and Joe seem to see. El. Oh. El.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is quite possibly the most birther comment of the day, if not the week.
I love it when lugnuts like John who can’t even spell the word “conspiracy” correctly think they’re going to educate us.
Hysterical!
Then he should GIVE UP! People who watch too many bad TV shows and movies develop the view that giving up is always bad and persevering against all odds is always the right thing to do. However, in real life, knowing when you’re beat and accepting that is often the right move.
Now African Press International has gone full “Birther”
http://africanpress.me/2012/03/09/president-obama-will-be-forced-by-circumstances-to-apologise-genuine-birth-certificate-surfaces-americans-have-been-led-to-believe-otherwise-revelation-to-change-the-political-landscape/
The claim is made that there is no physical document — that the PDF file is not a scan of any real document.
I thought they were always full birther.
I have taken note of some criticisms of the article made by commenters and have tweaked it some.
I finally got a chance to play around a little with my Mac and a scanner, and have come to a shocking conclusion:
I have a really old, crummy scanner.
But based on my poking around, I would put money on the White House having a Xerox WorkCentre color copier/scanner with a “scan to email” feature, rather than anything attached directly to someone’s Macintosh.
This would fit the available data, including the MRC artifacts. There is no intrinsic MRC functionality that I can see in Mac OS Quartz, so it’s much more likely it came from the scanner with MRC compression already in place, and WorkCentre copier/scanners do come with MRC built in.
The WorkCentre also has a Scan to file feature.
Oh, dear, we’ve independently reached the same results. Better keep it on the downlow.
If they used this printer to create the LFBC print then somewhere on the print is a secret code of the exact printer and date/time used to make the copy. This functionality is inherent in the print engine and cannot be bypassed. http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-5899905-7.html
Yep, and using that would fit the facts, too. But I love it when my copier emails things to me — it’s like I’m living in the future!
We’ve got boring old non-MRC, non-color Canon copiers here, unfortunately, so I can’t do further experimentation myself. But some Obot out there must have access to a WorkCentre with MRC… .
Heh, I was thinking of the notorious yellow dots earlier. But that’s in the print engine, not the scan component, right?
Right, but this would prove the LFBC print is not forged. The dots would be from the printer in HI DOH & could easily be traced by the proper authorities.
Makes sense to some degree. As to why it might say that it was created by Preview, someone could have loaded it into Preview and then saved it as a different filename. Then it would be stamped as being created by Preview using OSX QuartzContext.
I’ve used Preview to simply save a PDF with a password. Some tools that allow that cost money, but it’s built into Mac OSX.
Alas, we have a crummy B&W Toshiba here. Awesome productivity, but literally black and white. No greyscale, much less color.
MRC was developed at Xerox … is Obama financially tied to Xerox? 😉
All Adobe products allow the same (to my knowledge). Not too secure tho. LockLizard is much more impressive PDF security.
No password on the WH PDF … but I also note no editing capabilities in Preview. Anyone ever do the Preview test, to see whether Preview strips all markup from a file? I guess I could do it myself now, having been reblessed with the presence of a Mac.
Ursula is one of his advisors.
:O
MRC is 10 years old. He did make millions from Dreams in the 90s. My god, it’s all true! Corsi take me awaaaaaaaaaaaaay ….. *
Seriously, that’s like 6 moves ahead and stuff. 😉
In my travels, I get the feeling that none of the birthers can spell. Not a single one.
Actually, it figures. It says 1) They’re not real bright, 2) They are satisfied that their version is just as good as dictionary spellings, and 3) As long as their spelling makes sense to them, they don’t care what anyone else thinks.
In short, Birthers are as uncritical of their crappy spellings as they are of their crappy theories.
Hmm, their names are the same length… composed of alternating vowels and consonants… in reversed pattern! A cruciverbalist would immediately feel compelled to do something with that:
OBAMA
XEROX
The crosses spell: OX BE ARMO AX.
I’m pretty that’s a coded message. Please feel free to bolt in screaming panic at this point.
Actually, that’s exactly why I thought the “sent by mail” scenario would be compelling, since double-clicking the attachment in the mail received from the copier/scanner would bring it up in Preview, at which point there are reasonable workflow paths that wind up with a file saved with “Preview” as the “Content creator” .
Plus the process of retrieving a file from the printer is not as simple as retrieving a file from mail.
Yes, because the ENTIRE WORLD is “in on it!!!” and darn it, the good shurriff joe has to be sure to get his EVIDENCE and FACTS to the lone person who is NOT in the tank for President Obama.
So listen, john, tell him he should get with Trump and his people – give it to them cause you KNOW they are not “in on it”……darts eyes from side to side, whistering frantically……
You people are so mean……completely ignoring John just cause he’s a nutjob birther without a clue and is desparately wanting someone to rid him of that scary black man in HIS White house…..you people are Obama Conspiracy Theories are just so mean…..
Yes. It’s like the Ministry of Truth. Any original document that was in the Kenyan archives has been sent to the Ministry’s furnaces for destruction. However, they didn’t have enough time to produce a proper replacement to place with the Hawaii Dept of Health, so they had to quickly fake a created PDF for the White House to place in their archives. There’s now an “original” document that’s higher resolution to make it look plausible that the WH PDF came from this paper document even though the paper document didn’t exist until after the WH PDF was created.
Am I getting close to the truth?
I ran it through the Birfalizer T::E 5000 and got:
XOXO BE MY HOAX
Oh noes! Ursula passin’ notes to Obama, movin’ in on Michelle’s man! Be mine and I’ll make you President one day!
Never you mind where Ursula was or wasn’t 10 years ago.
Oh noes! She was at Xerox …. and has been since 1980!!!
Why is this soap opera already more plausible after an hour than 3 years of birfoonery?
The only question now is, who gets the candy heart franchise: WND, or Obama 2012? I’m hoping the latter, because then I’d buy a ton of ’em.
Or a box exam.
The fact that Colburn was convinced when he first saw the video is disturbing. I’ve been in IT for many years, and I LMAO when I saw those videos. Completely clueless amateurs.
Except, of course, the physical document was passed around at the press conference, and representatives from FactCheck.org handled and examined the actual COLB way back in 2008.
I am sure the hardcore PDF Madness sufferer believes whatever was passed out to the press was simply a print of the PDF (ridiculous as that is, and see my comment above). For them, the end all and be all is that PDF.
The funny thing is if they think only a pdf exists then what was the basis for the Johnson State Department in 1967 determining that Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961
The superconspiracy reaches and knows all.
Oh, and LBJ was a Dimmuh-rat, too. Right color, right state, wrong party. 2 out of 3 is not sufficient. LBJ was not a real American. Further, he was tainted by close contact with Kennedys. What more evidence of superconspiracy complicity do you need? 😉
Try as I might, I can’t out-nut the genuine nutters. Try as i might, i still can’t birth right.™
It took me a while to find it but this is the first time I can find that someone suggested a Xerox WorkCentre was the source of the Obama LFBC PDF.
This comment nailed it.