Yes, it’s true: The birth certificate is built in layers. And there’s an explanation.
I’m not a birther, but this is interesting from a tech point of view. It is true that the PDF birth certificate released by the WH today is not a single image doc, but is a layered construction. Here’s what I mean by that. Below is a series of screen shots in Adobe Illustrator CS4. Keep your eye on the Layers window over on the right. Here’s the document in Illustrator, with no layers twirled down to open them up. (You can click on all of the following images to enlarge them.)
And here it is, with the top level group twirled open. Viola, there are now a whole lotta layers visible for manipulation.
Let’s turn one off and see the results. You turn them off by clicking on the eye next to them. No eye, no see the layer.
Hm. Where’d all the green go? It’s invisible now, because turning that layer near the bottom off made it so. Click in that now empty box and the green reappears. Now let’s take a look at another layer and turn off the one above the green layer we just played with.
Where did all that text go? It’s invisible now too. But see the first image, with everything turned on.
Maybe this is what Trump’s people in Hawaii found that was so incredible. The problem is, it’s not too hard to figure out what’s going on. If you scan a doc with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) turned on, Adobe Acrobat is capable of taking a scanned doc and breaking it out into layers automatically. That’s what seems to have happened here. There are still one or two funky anomalies, like the text in box 17a getting split into two separate layers and the date in 20 getting its own, but OCR is an imperfect beast and stuff like that happens. The larger question seems to be settled on how the cert got broken out into layers: Adobe did it.
Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuh!
Now, there are at least 50 other ways to get the country to leave Obama. Let’s talk about them.
Bryan…I’m not a birther, either. For me…it’s too late to do this birth certificate stuff. This should have been done BEFORE he was sworn in. THAT was the LSMs fault for not doing their job. But this man has been sworn in whether we like it or not.
Trying to prove he isn’t elegible now makes zero difference. Imagine what would happen if he WERE to be deemed inelegible. Most people think it’s great because all the legislation he has signed like the healthcare law would be null and void. But remember…this man has engaged in WAR with other countries. He’s signed treaties. If he was illegitimate than our entire US economy would collapse. The US would come under lawsuit after lawsuit by every family of someone that has been killed because the US had attacked and killed their family member and no authority to do so. The 2008 election would be voided and that would mean Biden, too. It would be an economic disaster for America. I really hope that everyone will PLEASE move on but I doubt that they will. I have too many friends that want to keep pressing on this or any other issue to make him not able to be president. But that is what elections are for and I am looking forward to Sarah Palin in 2012!
Speppers69, all treaties signed by Obama would still be considered valid due to the fact that the final arbiter of what treaties the United States binds itself to is the U.S. Senate. They have ratifying power over any treaty the President, or any diplomat for that matter, signs. That’s why the U.S. never joined the League of Nations despite Wilson’s steadfast desire to join that body– The Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
Beyond that, I would suspect that laws that Obama signed into law would still similarly be in effect and his actions as Commander-in-Chief would still be binding on the military. After all, Congress did certify the 2008 election results as valid, as they were constitutionally required to do so, which lends a veneer of legitimacy to a possibly illegitimate Obama presidency. In the end, I think Biden would be president (unless he were implicated in the scandal too and forced to resign), and things would continue as they have been. Of course, this is all speculation and, most likely, the Supreme Court would have to get involved to hammer out the major issues.
It would also either a.) be a surefire victory for the GOP in 2012 and/or b.) cause the destruction of the Democratic Party (like the Hartford Convention did for the Federalists after the War of 1812). This, of course, would lead to one-party rule, which, of course, is a bad idea no matter which party does it.
That would mean that if someone kidnapped BO and replacing him with someone having the same appearance, anything that person did would be legitimate. You’re saying that it’s the office that has the power, not the man. I believe to the contrary, if the man is not legitimately president, then his acts are fraudulent. The Senate would never ratify the acts of a man who they believed not to be the president. And if that were proven beyond a doubt just after the election, would they be so accepting of fraud as you seem to be? It is not true that the presidency is meaningless, as you seem to advocate.
Maybe I need to explain the obvious. we are ALREADY under a one party rule. The problem is that most of you haven’t figured that out yet.
You left out that If it’s proven that he’s covering up things and or that this is a tampered with and or forged BC it could hurt him alot in the next election cycle.
And that’s the more practical and political thing that; Conservatives, Republicans, and Independents want.
Not to just want him and all of his decisions to be voided, which deserves to be done because of his obvious highly anti-American political platform and agenda.
Obama released his official birth certificate in 2008 (the same document that all citizens of Hawaii get when they ask for their BC.) The form Obama released in 2008 is legal proof of his birthplace (and according to the US Constitution it must be accepted as such by all states.)
What Obama released yesterday is merely the long form source material for that official birth certificate, it is not itself an official document. There is no rational reason for him to release this source form (and he had to get special permission from the State of Hawaii to do so because they normally don’t allow the release of it.)
Obama only released this long form source document to satisfy the irrational request of the birthers. Now he has done so and of course the really crazy people that believe in this ridiculous conspiracy theory will continue to believe in it because that’s what crazy people do. They ignore objective reality and live in their fantasy world.
You know, its nice and all that we are all so concerned that a black man’s occupancy in the oval office is in a constant state of being vetted. Let’s keep it up right up until November 4, 2012. Meanwhile where was everybody when the United States illegally seated a member of the Bush Crime family through a process that under United States law is highly illegal according to the United States Constitution. Who eve heard of a president being elected by judicial means? Let alone one whose family made it rich by doing business with the Third Reich in 1942. So basically America politically keeps kicking the sh*t out of the President who happens to be black yet we hire crime families to run our country.
Generally speaking, the only people in Washington who care whether our President is black or not are in the Congressional Black Caucus. You posit racism where you can’t prove it and ignore what there is in plain sight.
We have to listen to this garbage that everyone who dislikes Obama thinks of black people like some pimp in “The Mod Squad” and that the Tea Party simply IS racist.
If you want to see racism go to “The Root” and choose any article, any one and then read the comments too and you’ll find all the right out in the open racism to supplant the secret racism you can’t produce that a man could desire.
most people like to know why a whole group of people act a certain way. the mob mentality, so to speak. the teabaggers believe every bizarre rumor that comes out about obama..from the birther crap, to the secret muslim to the ayers wrote his autobiography crap…get it? normal people are not willing to suspend reality so easily. so, a lot of people think the reason teabaggers do is because of racism. I agree.
Making such a blanket statement about the Tea Party in their thousands reveals more about you than the Tea Party.
So, my statement stands – people who accuse others of racial generalities and then make racial generalities. That was what I was talking about.
You say that you aren’t a birther, and yet you give yourself away by using a term like “LSMs”
Article 2 Section 1 ……..(In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.) (This clause in parentheses has been modified by the 20th and 25th Amendments.)
Section 4 The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Amendment 20 , 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Amendment 25 , 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Are saying that they used OCR, and didn’t use the results?
And doesn’t this purport to be a photocopy?
Not sure I understand you.
The OCR explanation is obviously wrong (it would be a poor algorithm indeed that missed the trailing character of a word or number) but mixed raster content based compression would seem to adequately explain what we’re seeing.
Altered document:
Look at this closeup of the # 4 on the cert # 61 10641
It clearly-clearly looks like it was changed from either a 2 or a 9 to a 4.
And the last #1 clearly-clearly is faded out unlike any of the other #’s, it was clearly-clearly added on in place of another # or just added on.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
Why is it written-signed:
(Stanley)
Ann Dunham Obama
???
First of all, look at this posting for the most useful decomposition of the many layers in this document I’ve found (I don’t myself have software that can do that).
The messiness of the “4″ that you mention could also be due to scanning and compression artifacts and to my trained eye (see below) looks more like that than an alteration.
The difference in the trailing 1 is definitely a compression artifact. The beginning of the number is on the primary foreground plane, which the compression software has driven to be almost all black or white (examine a histogram with your favorite image software; doing this makes the document much smaller). The trailing “1″ was missed by the MRC software which left it on the background plane which is a more general color one, which therefore allows it to be gray instead (and therefore much less compressed).
If you look at the above posting I linked to and grok compression systems and the MRC approach (which just figures out layers before applying standard compression techniques to them, see the links on the Wikipedia page I’ve cited elsewhere) there’s nothing I’ve found in this PDF file that looks altered by hand. Which of course doesn’t mean anything wasn’t modified before the final MRC based compression, the subject of comment 14 by Greg is beyond my areas of expertise. But I do know scanning and compression artifacts, I’ve developed and built, or help in both, systems that together scanned millions of images in the first half of the ’90s.
Makes sense. But why would you scan a document in OCR format instead of Image format unless you plan to manipulate the text later? I scan documents every day into PDF format and very rarely do I scan OCR because it lends itself to recognition mistakes and therefore improper rendering of the source. If your reason for scanning is to display an accurate copy of the document to dispel doubts about your birth, why on earth would you scan in OCR mode???
Perhaps the person who scanned it had been in OCR mode before and merely forgot to switch modes?
Never attribute to evil intent what can easily be explained by human error or incompetence.
Administration incompetence does not reassure me.
Okay, let me get this straight.
You’ve never, in all your personal or professional experience with computers (you must have at least some, to be commenting here), been working with a program in mode “A” and forgotten to switch away from that mode when moving to a task that should be handled in mode “B”?
And because you’ve never done that, we should never trust anyone who has?
Is that what you’re saying?
Actually, it’s a fair question in context: shouldn’t they have consulted with an expert before releasing something that they should have known would be examined with a microscope?
So let me get this straight: everything this administration does is clouded with ineptness and that’s ok with you, right? Same with the last administration and virtually EVERY administration since the early 1900′s at least.
Forgive me, but ignorance, stupidity and inept error proneness is NOT ok with me.
But to someone that simply MUST explain away the evidence, its all that is available.
Actually, Harold, let me allow another computer expert to answer your query (emphasis added):
Look, you nutburgers can spend all your time obsessing over something that is easily explained by someone innocently forgetting to click a button on a toolbar or in a menu. And, to be perfectly honest with you, you’re doing precisely what Obama wants… he’s been using this issue for the past 2+ years to paint all his opponents as paranoid kooks, and you’re falling right into his trap!
But, hey, if you wanna make his plans work, that’s your choice. I prefer to foil his plans wherever possible.
OK, Nathan Goulding most certainly is a “computer expert”, he was National Review Online’s CTO and is now a sales engineer for a hosting company. But I see no evidence he’s experienced in document imaging (although I grant that my serious professional experience there is in the first half of the ’90s, but I’ve kept my hand in a bit since then).
That said, while his technical explanation is clearly wrong (this wasn’t operator error, it’s almost certainly MRC based compression, as noted in a comment to his posting which first alerted me to that possibility), his general point is correct and if you look at my postings elsewhere on this thread I’ve gone into detail about that.
And why would it be “incompetence” to scan this document with OCR mode on? Who cares?
Take any PDF, one that is all text to make it simple, open it in Adobe Illustrator and it will have layers, ones where you can turn sections of the text on and off so they will appear and disappear just like Obama’s PDF. It’s some kind of magic, probably made by wizards.
Next case.
Signed – Doofy Doofwhich
The image was more than likely scanned in Hawaii at the department of vital records. They image stuff all the time with OCR, so it’s not unfathomable they just scanned it like any other document.
The posted document now on the WhiteHouse.gov site was refreshed just before 3pm EST today. It is now all one layer. I don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator, only The GIMP. and, The GIMP didn’t show layers.
Can some check the current version against the one posted this morning?
I opened it in Photoshop CS and it did not have layers.
It won’t. When you open an “optimized” pdf in Photoshop, or import it, regardless, it will be rasterized down to one base layer. Open it in AI and the layers will show. The same pdf won’t open in Macromedia Freehand, another vector graphics program. So the issue is confined to opening in AI. Additionally, I believe it has less to do with scanning the image using OCR vice scanning it in Acrobat with the “optimized” setting checked. OCR is a variable within that setting.
That new one still comes up layers in Adobe Illustrator. All the PDFs I’m throwing into Illustrator at random from different sources are doing the same thing. I believe the Adobe Illustrator Document, which is how you save a layered art piece in general in AI, is the default file and is a type of more sophisticated PDF, and there is an Adobe PDF to save a file as too.
Both the new and old doc are flattened in Photoshop. It’s because it rasterizes them and so they’re flattened.
The layers in the Obama doc are probably random. Hard to believe a con artist wouldn’t flattened their work. Don’t take this as the final word; layered files are almost encyclopedic in what they can do and the different versions. But I think there’s no story in these layers.
That was done by the White House to apparently confuse those who read Bryan’s analysis.
All they did was ‘print’ the document file they were ‘working’ with to an Adobe PDF file.
The OCR and the layers are not embedded in the one layer/plain PDF file.
Poof…no more questions.
I am not a birther either and I agree with Mr. Obama that there are more important issues…like why did he give $25,000,000 to Libyan rebels, a group of people we know little or nothing about. Maybe it is for them to buy SUVs
An interesting statistic, that $25 Mil would buy about 5,500,000 gallons of gas for THIS down trodden Nation. But then again, Mr. Obama feels you should “…buy a smaller car or a bike or better yet walk like Kenyans do.”
Bryan,
Are you riffing on Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover?
Its too late to squabble over forged documents for this Kenyan has proven his inability to lead, organize, or manage. He is a fool. If he is re-elected by the fools who elected him in 2008 the United States will cease to be the United States. We will in short order be a world 2nd class citizen. Broke, destitute and desolute.
Pretty much…
Yes…the path we were set on prior to his getting into office. How conveniently people forget how bad things were getting under the previous administration.
After spending a good deal of time today scrutinizing the PDF in Adobe Illustrator and researching the specifics of birth certificates from the same time Obama was born in Hawaii, I am actually convinced now more than ever that it is genuine. I believe what happened was that the birth certificate that Hawaii has on record is a photostat (negative) which is, upon request, printed on the green-patterned paper to prevent forgeries.
What likely happened is the WH asked for a digital version so anyone could download it, but when the digital version was created from the two layers (photostat and green pattern), some of the photostat layer got separated by Acrobat’s (or similar PDF-producing program) file size reducing algorithms. I actually don’t think OCR technology had anything to do with it, as many sites are speculating. Case closed.
If you look closely at high mag you will see that parts of the image were manually edited. Who in their right mind decided to doctor the image? That must be covered in Law 101. If the compression reduced image quality and caused layers to blend, then provide the original undoctored image with enhanced image and make sure everyone knows the image was enhanced to make it more legible.
And where is the embossed State Seal of Hawaii? — Mine has it.
No relation.
The pdf is not searchable in Acrobat Pro. Are you sure the layers are explained by OCR? If you look at the scan image at high zoom, you can see many places where the image has been altered. Isn’t it strange that they are presenting an image as proof without providing the original undoctored image and also without saying the image was manipulated (presumably to enhance it)?
Ok, I buy the layer explaination, can anyone print the document and repeat the automatic generation of the layers?
I would like to see it.
I don’t know what you mean by that – a print is a print on flat paper. I could print each layer I wanted to separately out of AI and I have already saved it as a PDF out of AI and it still had the layers.
I believe what pea2 is suggesting is printing the document to paper, presumably without the security paper layer, and then rescanning it to see if the layers that automatically are created match this pdf.
It probably wouldn’t come out the same. The original scan put the word “none” on two different layers because it sensed some difference; tone, contrast, cursive – I don’t know.
It indeed wouldn’t recompress the same way because of how this fascinating example worked:
The “e” is in the main text layer, which is grayscale but strongly pushed towards either white or black. The compression software was smart enough to recognize that the “Non” was indeed just black and white and its layer is a one bit deep bitmap. But I assume due to the layering underneath it the final result has it as a lighter shade of gray than the “e”, which is also a shade of gray and in the samples I tested it too is all one shade of gray.
I believe what pea2 is suggesting is printing the document to paper, presumably without the security paper active, and then rescanning the printed data to see if the layers that are automatically created match this pdf.
No, you need the security paper background so that the MRC based compression has a chance to put that in the background plane and most of the text in foreground planes. See my comments elsewhere in this thread for more details on how this original result likely came about.
Thank You. All over this country people on fixed incomes are being buried by inflation created by the Obama policies. Gas, food, and whatever are a whole lot more important than a phony controversy about a birth certificate. Barry played the birthers like Heifitz played the fiddle. And they fell for it.
In my opinion, this is more damning to Mr. Obama than not, as it shows his father to be a Kenyan citizen, but beyond that, this is appalling.
For the president, the Commander in cheif of our military, to dismiss as “silliness” an issue which has caused a career military officer like Lt. Col. Terry Lakin to lose his position, his pension and his freedom is beyond immoral. If it was truly “silliness”, then why not produce it when the Lt. Col asked for it, so that, properly reassured of the legitimacy of his commanding officer, he could have deployed?
This is a cosmic “FAIL” on the part of Mr. Obama. To cause even one member of our voluntary military to lose his/her freedom over what he considers to be “silliness” is so appalling, so heinous…… I am beyond digust.
He needs to be removed from office as he is unfit to act as commander in chief.
I agree. For him to wait for all this time to release whatever this is, is inexcusable. He either needed time to have it manufactured, or he was just jerking people around like a grade-schooler. Either way he once again does NOT fail to let us down with his unpresidential behavior. I shouldn’t be surprised by this since he’s not really a president; I’m not sure what he is, but he isn’t a president. He was, is, and will forever be a Chicago thug politician, groomed and trained by Chicago thugs. The chip on his shoulder for America, and the socialist blood that courses through every vein in his multi-racial body are so destructive to us that we cannot, CANNOT, tolerate another stolen term in office.
Defeat Obumble in 2012.
There is a saddening amount of ignorance and racism in these comments. If there are two ideas that are anti-American, here they are. No one asked George Bush for a birth certificate; perhaps his color makes him more American to you?
They didn’t ask Bush for his birth certificate because both of his parents were obviously natural born citizens; however, Bush did release his school credentials and records unlike Obama…
@ Thoughtful,
I am not a racist for not liking Mr. Obama.
I dislike him because he voted to kill babies who survived the abortion procedure.
I dislike him because his policies and his worldview embrace marxism.
I dislike him because he has turned the command of our military over to NATO for a war in which this country has no vital interests.
I dislike him because he has ordered $25 million in aid and comfort to be given to the Libyan rebels, some of whom have publicly stated that they are members of al quaida or other groups who have/are/and will be fighting against our troops.
And finally, (for the sake of brevity,I could go on.) I dislike him because, as the acting commander in cheif, he allowed a career military officer, Lt, Col. Terry Lakin to be deprived of his position, his pension and his freedom instead of doing everything in his power to respond in a timely fashion to that patriotic officer’s legitimate request for confirmation of his eligibility. A matter that same unethical man now categorizes as “silliness”. It is unconscionable for the commander in cheif to do that to a career officer in our military. Simply unconscionable.
I have to say that any one of those things would cause me to dislike a given individual, but put them all together and it makes for an individual that I truly despise and not because of the color of their skin. Solely because of the content of their character.
I would love for Allen West to run and I am seriously considering the candidacy of Herman Cain.
It IS possible to disagree with a mudshark for reasons other than racism. It’s possible to take issue with the policies and decisions made by a moon-cricket without being a racist. You can dislike a porch-monkey and not be a racist. It is possible to despise a sambo and everything he stands for, yet not be racist.
There’s some racism for you, you dumb dickhead.
He released his birth certificate ages ago. The same one that is required of everyone who runs for president, the same one that is required to get a passport. This “long form” thing is not something that has been required as a proof of birth for ANYONE. He dismissed it as silly because it IS silly. No one required a “long form” birth certificate from any other president in the past. Birthers are nutjobs and the president knew it. He finally got sick of the fact that they will not let go of their little conspiracy theories and presented an additional proof of birth that was not necessary.
To the best of my knowledge,(Which is certainly not exhaustive, although I do try to inform myself) the first time any part of the US Congress has defined the term “natural born citizen” for the purpose of presidential eligibility was in no…n-binding SR511. That was ostensibly done to certify that John McCain was eligible.
However, my take on this issue is (and has been) that;
because there has been no prior attempt by the Congress to define that term and;
because SR 511 is being used to confirm the eligibility of the children of American parents born on military bases in other nations(not just Panama),to be natural born citizens for the purpose of presidential eligibility and;
because SR 511 was passed prior to the election in 2008;
The defintion contained therein (to paraphrase the legislation-)’ born of American parents on American soil’ is the properand legal definition of the term “natural born citizen” for the purposes of presidential eligibility.
Under that definition, Mr. Obama, having only one American citizen for a parent, is not legally eligible to be the president of the US, regardless of his place of birth.
As for your comment that it is silly, I beg to differ. This is a Constitutional issue of real substance. In addition, if Mr. Obama is found to have been elected illegitimately, that means that every single peice of legislation which he has signed becomes null and void. It means that every czar he has appointed becomes unemployed and it means that we are a nation still under the rule of law, rather than the rule of whomever can manipulate the system and fool the people the best.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately and as yet, we have not seen anyone in a position to call this issue into question with the character and intestinal fortitude to do it. What does that say about our nation right there?
If we cannot elect people who are willing to stand up for this simplest part of our Constitution, can the rest of the document long stand?
Look at Hillary Clinton. She is not supposed to be eligible to serve as secretary of state either-also by the dictates of the Constitution.
How much are we going to let slide before we have had enough? And will we take that stand soon enough to preserve our republic – one nation under God, with Liberty and Justice for all?
Also, as to your assertion that no one has had to produce their long form birth certificate to run for president in the past, John McCain was required to show his. That why SR 511 even came into being.
Photoshop expert: and author of more than 17 books on computer graphics Mara Zebest: Obama’s Latest Long-Form Birth Certificate Is a Fake!
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/04/critics-obamas-latest-long-form-birth-certificate-is-a-fake/
It is true their are bounding boxes right in the spaces you might most want to change but why would they leave that in – it’s too obvious and it is in both versions.
There is no explanation that explains layers on a birth certificate that is 47 years old. 1) that paper was not used in 61, 2) it was produced with a typewriter,not a computer in 61 because computers did not exist 3) layers are something that is done in Adobe Photoshop which allows you to clone backgrounds and clean up images. There is no reason for a scanned document to be manipulated in that manner period. And yes, I have been a graphics specialist for 2 decades, and I say that if that was an original document scanned for the internet, there is no reason for it to be anything but one layer unless it has been altered.
There is an explanation, mixed raster content based compression, which separates layers AKA planes of the image to achieve higher compression. That would appear to be why e.g. some of the trailing characters are on a different plane than the rest of the word or number and they look different due to different compression artifacts.
As for the safety paper background, as I understand it the “original” is a microfilm or microfiche archival copy which supplies the (negative?) image which is then applied over the background; a bit cheesy but it would be a reasonable thing for the state to do. My birth certificate has a weird plain brown background based on the reproduction technology of the time (which does make one wonder why Obama didn’t supply the copy he’s had for many years to get various forms of ID and so on, Obama’s only a year and a bit younger than me….).
Or Team Obama could have done this (I’ve seen a version with what looks like a blue background but I don’t know its provenience) to make it look better. But that says nothing good or bad about the actual content that was applied to the safety paper background.
If you scan it to a PDF there will be layers and depending on the actions created in the software it will try to resolve different shapes, contrasts, colors, etc. and put them onto different layers.
You can see if you open the actions in AI that different elements were rotated 90 degrees if it was seen by the scanner to be on its side.
One website expert said these actions were done separately and deliberately but it looks like they were just automated, saving what was deem solid as a gif., what had gradations as a jpeg.
OCR will allow for example blind people to hear text. I’m not surprised a bureaucrat would make such a document as they are covering all the bases as it were.
The funny thing I just thought of is that if you WERE to fake something like this, it’d have to be someone you’d be 100% sure would never betray you. So what are the chances of that someone being a Photoshop expert? Someone mentioned that some of the actions seen in AI were done in an old Photoshop 5 version.
Wonder what Bill Ayers has?
Really though, I think the OCR software struggled to interpret the data, put it on different layers as best it could and there’s no story.
Spending millions to avoid producing the simple piece of paper all Americans are required to provide before doing nearly anything official is not silly. It’s a schoolboy prank with monopoly money.
It might be a sign of hedonism in an actor, unprofessional but something that could be overlooked.
In a CEO, it might be seen as a bizarre display of “Because I Can-ism”.
In the President of the United States, it’s unconscionable. I agree with Call Me Mom @April 27, 2011 6:23 pm: perpetuating an elaborate gimmick like this is wrong on a level I would never have imagined in any President, no matter the party. It shows a profound incapacity to respect the ordinary people who might have worried about this matter. What kind of person causes needless concern for so little reason among the very people he is supposed to represent?
Mr Obama is supposed to represent all of us, yet he seems unwilling to represent ALL of us.
Jude:
I agree with your assessment. That’s the kind of thing you need to do if you want to print out the original data, including signatures, on new security enhanced paper.
Folks should keep in mind that the digital image is not an official document. It’s just the representation of a document which has been physically printed out on the required paper.
You people are pathetic. You’ve been screaming for two and a half years to see the president’s birth certificate and now that you’ve seen it you still don’t believe it. Nothing will ever be good enough for you because your real problem (which you will also never admit) is that you’re just ordinary garden variety RACISTS!!! But that’s to be expected because I’ve never met a racist in my life that was willing to acknowledge that they were one.
I’m not garden variety; I own an impressive collection of Everlovin’ Hulk stretch socks and I can play the bassoon.
I thought Obama’s mother was White and his father allegedly Black. I’m beginning to see that the racists are Obama loyalists. Or maybe they’re just bigots who insult anyone who doesn’t go along with them.
There it is, folks……the play of last resort, the final declaration by those who cannot defend Obumble’s absurd actions: the ever-lovin’ Race Card. What would the libs do if their deck came without that card?? My God, they might actually have to come up with a defense for Obumble’s destroying America.
I’m a racist? Put Alan West on the ticket and watch how fast I vote for him. Actually what we are are simply people who want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Obumble is incapable of telling the truth so we certainly don’t look towards him and his administration of buffoons for it.
Why are you so afraid of the truth? It’ll set you free!
@gary I’m a racist white guy,i think the whole deal Outrageously funny!
racism is finaly cool again,Thx Obama
@18. Gary
Allan West for president!
The Obama’s BC is a forgery.
(I must be some special kind of racist, huh?)
Birthers are the best thing that could happen to the Obama re-election campaign, proving to the rest of us that a large segment of the Republican party consists of nut jobs, conspiracy theorists and racists. The best case scenario is that some wigged out tea bagger wins the GOP nomination. Run Donnie run.
Personally, I don’t give a crap about the certificate, it is too late to be concerned with it. If he’s not a natural citizen, or if he was born in the White House itself, it is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that Mr. Obama is still hiding something.
He has spent millions in legal fees to keep all of his records hidden and spent two years obfuscating and frustrating all efforts to find out the truth. His Credibility is gone. If he were to claim that the sun was coming up tomorrow and that the sky would be blue, I would still have to check for myself since he can no longer be trusted to tell the truth. One should ask, even his supporters should ask, if there was no problem with this, why the two year delay? So far Obama’s “transparent” administration has been anything but.
“If he’s not a natural citizen, or if he was born in the White House itself, it is irrelevant.”
The circumstances of the candidate’s birth are a legal requirement specified in the Constitution. This requirement is irrelevant only if the President is above the law.
I thought we were through with that sort of thing after Nixon.
I buy the OCR/scanning artifacts explanation. It used to happen a lot to me with my scanner. It had several scanning options: document, mixed image-text, image, B&W… and, for some reason, the default option was mixed image-text. When you scanned any new standalone document that was the default. The exception was when you scanned by batches and set the scanning mode to something different before starting the task. Otherwise: always mixed mode. Mixed mode was a real pain (at least for me) because it tried to identify text and images… with bizarre, disastrous results, like the ones you see in Obama’s long-form Cert. The printed results were sometimes… interesting.
As for the embossed seal, I don’t know, but it can be because they didn’t print the cert in an embossed paper since this was an exception and they didn’t have the paper/seal or they forgot. Remember that they don’t use the long-form anymore in Hawaii. This long-form cert was taken from the archives as a special favor to the Prez in order to try and quell the birthers.
Curiosity: in the Telegraph.co.uk, they have the long-form cert without the green background.
So far, nobody I’ve looked at has mentioned the fact that many of the elements that are part of the ruled line image (when separated) are in fact touching the ruled lines, and thus form a continuous image. This most notable in the mother’s signature, where the part of the signature that touches the rule goes with the ruled image (layer) and the part of the signature that does not touch the lines goes with the other image (layer).
So why did Abercrombie say it didn’t exist?
As for imaging I found this interesting:
Assembled on a computer, not scanned….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c&feature=player_embedded
I’m speculating here: I think Abercrombie said the LFBC didn’t exist anymore because it does not exist anymore. The long-form cert doesn’t exist anymore as a *material piece of paper* printed with a typewriter and a pen. I read somewhere that ALL the certificates were transferred to microfilm and the original papers discarded. So when some officials in Hawaii say they don’t keep ANY original LFBC they are right. And when other officials say they keep all the LFBCs, they are right, in a way, since they keep the microfilms.
It’s not a matter of conspiracy. It’s bureaucracy. I remember one occasion where 2 colleagues and I asked the same question at the same office, but chance made it so there was a different official each time. We got 3 different, mutually-excluding answers and none of them was the good one. And, anyway, the procedure changed the following year. And then it changed again. Bureaucracy.
Abercrombie never said it didn’t exist.
Curious. People are falling all over themselves to claim that this thing is genuine. But that doesn’t pass the smell test. The White House is not normally where one would expect to find legal documentation from a half-century ago and the other end of the country. There is no secure chain of custody, any more than there is when somebody finds a box filled with ostensibly uncounted ballots in some poll worker’s garage after an election. Hawaii should be able to release the legally significant version, whether it’s a bit of paper in a vault, a roll of microfilm, or a sloppily scanned file on a computer, and shouldn’t need any coaching from Washington.
In the end, there should be a copy in some format which can be presented to a Federal judge for examination. What the newspapers, TV, Donald Trump, or a bunch of anonymous guys on web fora think about it is of no legal significance.
Altered document:
Look at this closeup of the # 4 on the cert # 61 10641
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
It clearly-clearly looks like it was changed from either a # 2 or a # 9 to a # 4.
And the last #1 clearly-clearly is faded, blurry, and added on, unlike any of the other #’s which are all shaped correctly, not faded, and are all clear.
Except for the # 4 which has clearly-clearly been changed from a # 2 or a # 9 to a # 4.
It was clearly-clearly added on in place of another # or just added on.
Cert # 61 10641 the las 2 numbers have obviously been poorly altered.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
Why is it written-signed:
(Stanley)
Ann Dunham Obama instead of
Stanley Ann Dunham like it is on the short form COLB:
http://www.wnd.com/images/misc/shortform.jpg
???
Why is the last # 1 the only # of the cert # 61 10641 to show up on photo layer-4 ?
And that is the same # 1 that is the only faded-blurry # in the cert # 61 1064 ’1′ on the full BC photo-all layers:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/birth-cert-layers4-300×270.jpg
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/obamas_birth_certifcate_forgery/
Altered document:
Look at this closeup of the # 4 on the cert # 61 10641
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
It clearly-clearly looks like it was changed from either a # 2 or a # 9 to a # 4.
And the last #1 clearly-clearly is faded, blurry, and added on, unlike any of the other #’s which are all shaped correctly, not faded, and are all clear.
Except for the # 4 which has clearly-clearly been changed from a # 2 or a # 9 to a # 4.
It was clearly-clearly added on in place of another # or just added on.
Cert # 61 10641 the las 2 numbers have obviously been poorly altered.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
Why is it written-signed:
(Stanley)
Ann Dunham Obama instead of
Stanley Ann Dunham like it is on the short form COLB:
http://www.wnd.com/images/misc/shortform.jpg
???
Why is the last # 1 the only # of the cert # 61 10641 to show up on photo layer-4 ?
And that is the same # 1 that is the only faded-blurry # in the cert # 61 1064 ’1′ on the full BC photo-all layers:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/birth-cert-layers4-300×270.jpg
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1575
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2711155/posts?q=1&;page=1001
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/obamas_birth_certifcate_forgery
I have a photo of Obama riding a giant eagle over the Catskills.
You can see it here:
gettaGODDAMlife.com
This is not the first time I’ve seen something and then had the President and the Press tell me what it was I saw.
The whole point is if the Courts finally define what a “natural born citizen” is and did he become an Indonesian citizen when Mr. Soetero adopted him. There would be a number of questions about what happens to a child’s citizenship and if he can reclaim his U.S. citizenship when he becomes an adult using the claim that had he been able to make his own decision (as a child) he would never have renounced it.
It also depends on the dual citizenship laws in effect at the time he was in Indonesia. Is the child of an American citizen and an alien a “natural born” citizen or not?
Why would one scan an image using OCR? I mean, why try to pull text out of that picture? It’s not like someone only wanted the text..
I just use the Windows Scanner wizard. Produces jpg of appropriate size, done. No Adobe.
Just why?
OCR was not implemented for this document. If it was, you would be able to search text within the document. It’s just an image PDF, NOT a PDF Text Searchable.
OK I just went through ALL my old files on my computer looking for documents and flyers I have scanned into PDF format and sure enough the ANSWER was there. ALL and I mean ALL of the files I have made from scanning and then saving into PDF format are LAYERED … the Adobe program Automatically breaks the text into separate layers … Problem solved the Certificate layers are natural and not faked … sorry birthers
All the old PDFs I have put at random into Illustrator have layers.
“And the last #1 clearly-clearly is faded, blurry, and added on, unlike any of the other #’s which are all shaped correctly, not faded, and are all clear…”
What happened here, as Harold has tried to explain several times, is not OCR, but image optimization. The goal of optimization is to make the PDF as small as possible, so the algorithm uses a very smart method to divide things in layers based on the content and then optimizes each layer using the best method for that layer.
What happens when you do that is you get some weird stuff like the most of a number on one layer and a trailing 1 on another layer. If you look at the closeups, you will see that most of the number is pure black and white and optimized as such. Optimizing as pure black and white allows for a huge amount of compression but does have its problems (see how different the individual 6′s and 1′s are).
Somehow in the layer dividing process the algorithm found the trailing 1 to be more grayscale and thus optimized it on a different layer. The drawbacks of the different optimization methods in this case actually exaggerates what were likely originally more subtle changes. Read Harold’s comments above, they explain this process further.
Another thing people have been saying is that since you can see the green background on it’s own layer that is also evidence of a fake. However, if someone were constructing this document in photoshop, that background would have been intact, without the white blanks where text once was. It certainly would look more realistic to fake the document without those white blanks.
However, this is actually more evidence that the layer was created after-the-fact, because if you separate the text from an image, an algorithm won’t just try to fill in the background pattern, it will leave that blank. If you are working forward the background should be complete; if you are working backwards from a full image, you get blanks where you pulled stuff out.
It’s unfortunate that they didn’t just release a high-resolution TIFF image, but geez it’s amazing how many graphics experts we suddenly have touting their expert opinions.
As for the image optimization, this is something that can be backed up by recreating the effect. You can see an example at http://rapidshare.com/files/459511882/layered-cert.zip. This file contains PDF documents before and after using Acrobat’s optimization feature, which you can open in Illustrator to see results similar to Obama’s birth cert.
You mean like the author of this piece, with his ‘OCR – but somehow lacking resultant searchable text fields’?
Yah – that IS irritating.
I would like to point out a couple of things:
1) While everyone’s already leading in with “After years of conspiracy theories…” let us not forget that this also comes after YEARS of Obama spending an ass-load of money (something like upward of $2MM?) fighting legal demands for that document in court.
Apparently, it wasn’t too ‘silly’ to spend more money on it than any of us will ever see at one time.
2) He’s been ‘amused’ and ‘puzzled’ – he says we don’t have time for this ‘silliness’ – but it occurs to me that he must not have thought that this issue was all that ‘silly’ when a congressional committee found it VITALLY IMPORTANT to comb through John McLame’s (easily and willingly provided) records from-birth-to-present.
3) He spent the entire speech spinning around a message of ‘There, now don’t ask me for the next one!’ – which I find strangely similar to the first Nixon speech – you know, when he released some of the tapes and then said ‘There, that’s what you wanted – now go away!’
I guess now we’re all supposed to say – “Oh! Well! A Birth Certificate! I guess we’ll just drop that matter of ‘his’ Social Security number that actually belongs to someone who died right about the time The Won needed a SS# – Birth Certificate! There really IS nothing to see here! Let’s move along!
Yah.
Thank you for a very good higher level description of what’s going on. I’ve been having too much fun with this (to me) shiny new toy of MRC based compression to do that … plus I suppose I unreasonably expected people would follow the Wikipedia link and fill in the gaps of their knowledge about this field like I did.
The Truth Is Out There but most readers are going to have to do some work to understand what’s going on if they don’t have up-to-date knowledge of document imaging. Here are three Wikipedia articles that can get people started from the top down:
Document imaging.
Raster graphics.
Image compression.
OCR would fit it the layers did not include cursive. Sorry OCR does not pick up cursive letters..Nice try though.
how is it then on the layer that looks like white out…did it not remove the “R” in BARACK. (that part is not showing in your example)
The algorithm that was detecting text failed to recognize it, so it was left behind on the background plane. To achieve good compression results the system doesn’t have to be perfect, only “good”, and given how varied the darkness of the letters of old manual typewriters can be I’m impressed by how good a job the system did. It missed:
The lines of the form. That’s almost certainly a design decision; maybe a limitation but they’re pretty
A very small number of mechanically printed letters, both preprinted on the form, typewritten and stamped.
Most but not all of the signatures. What it picked up of Obama’s mother’s looks pretty regular to me.
It also did a very good job on the whole certification region (picked that out for yet another layer), which makes sense since it’s brand new and I’d assume of much higher quality than the rest which is 1961 technology.
Hold on a minute there boys; just what’s all this about a social security number I’ve been hearing about?
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Hup!
What about the signatures though?
Here’s a site that has an in depth video. http://obamalayers.com
Why didn’t they just put up darn jpeg?
The document released doesn’t make Obama a better President. He’s not up to the job of representing the citizenry or either he could care less. The DNC forced this candidate onto us. The Democrat would’ve won whoever the nominee was. They had to ignore the votes of millions of voters in Michigan and Florida and Texas to get him the nod. He may hhave been elected once but it won’t happen again. People aren’t that stupid. They’re stupid, but not that stupid.
Oh yeah? They were stupid enough to elect George W Bush twice.
The federal deficit is over $14 trillion and rising. The FED estimated the unfunded liabilities of entitlements in 2009 to be almost $100 trillion, and now estimated to be $111 trillion. In March the total income was not enough to cover Medicare, Medicaid, SS and interest on the debt, per the US Treasury report. And we are dithering about a birth certificate?
Logic? Reality? Common sense? The birther compulsion eschews these emotions in their furtive drive to make the facts conform to their theory.
This article states that Obama’s birth certificate appears layered because it was scanned using OCR. The problem with premise is that one can easily show that the document was never scanned. Therefore, any defense claiming OCR as the culprit is false.
Please check out this video for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c&feature=player_embedded
Sorry, second sentence should read “the problem with [this] premise . . .”
OK, I get it how Adobe automatically creates layers when optimized scanning is enabled. That explains the mere presence of layers, as opposed to a flat image. But it doesn’t tell us if any intentional layering and document alteration took place. In fact, using the optimization feature might be a cleaver way to disguise any intentional alteration. Hiding a tree in the forest, so to speak. All I’m saying is that explaining away the presence of layers doesn’t vet the document or image.
I saw comments elsewhere about the absence of expected chromatic aberrations in the offered image that tends to indicate that the crisp text characters we see were not produced during a color scan. I also saw comments about the difference between the background resolution (clarity) of the green pattern seen behind the signature and date areas and elsewhere on the image. Do an of you gurus have anything on those issues?
Obviously, I meant “clever,” not “cleaver,” although some might consider the image to be a hack job.
You are correct that what I think I’m seeing doesn’t vet the image.
Your point about chromatic aberration is well chosen. In this case I believe it’s because the true original has long been discarded in favor of much more compact and easily copied microfilm or microfiche which use black and white film. An official copy today would likely be made using a digital scanner on that, in this case apparently producing a gray scale copy (the major layer on top of the background is gray scale). That was then digitally applied to the safety paper background, we don’t know by who or when or exactly how (very possibly just printing it out on a laser printer loaded with that paper), producing the sort of PDF we’ve been dissecting.
UNRESOLVED OCR ISSUE: Some expert needs to provide one more piece of information before I buy the OCR explanation hook, line, and layered sinker. BEFORE I run OCR on a pdf file, when I click on the image, THE ENTIRE IMAGE HIGHLIGHTS. AFTER I run OCR on a file in Adobe Acrobat, and then click on the screen INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS HIGHLIGHT. Open the White House file (for those of you lucky enough to have saved copies) and click on the image. Individual characters DO NOT highlight, but instead, the entire screen does. This would appear to be consistent with a document on which OCR HAS NOT BEEN RUN. Input from an expert would be appreciated.
Not sure I buy it. I think the evidence is leaning toward faked, and the fact-checking sites are beginning to confirm it:
http://conservativefactcheck.com/content/articles/3
Hopefully the truth will be known when Orly Taitz goes to Hawaii on August 8 to see the original birth certificate. She’s bringing along two document experts.
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