It’s been a long day (Sunday). Starting off with my jumping the gun several times. And in opposite directions. 
It was time I stepped back, took a few deep breaths, read through the entire techdude report, and spend the next number of hours mulling it all over.
So, starting nearly at the top:
By separating the certificate issue dates into groups the pre-2006 certificates show a clearly different security border design than the more recent 2006 through 2008 design.
I’m rather dumbfounded at how techdude says the pre-2006 certificates show a celarly different security design than the more decent 2006 through 2008 design so nonchalantly. This from the same person who had previously said:
If there was a new or modified certificate security pattern introduced there would also be a different revision date indicating that it had been revised after November 2001.
…
As consistency and precision are the keys to spotting forgeries it is extraordinarily unlikely – perhaps even to the point of impossibility – that the revision numbers would be the same while containing different “certificate patterns”.
Let’s say that again.
Extraordinarily unlikely – perhaps even to the point of impossibility – that the revision numbers would be the same while containing different “certificate patterns.”
However as I pointed out in a previous post, the revision numbers in the 2008 Michele COLB (and presumably the 2006 and 2007 anonymous COLBs as well), are the same as the revision numbers in the 2002 DeCosta COLB with the “clearly different security border design.”
Yet in his final report, he notes the different security border design as if he’d never uttered the words above and instead of it being extraordinarily unlikely – perhaps even to the point of impossibility – it’s as if it’s a common, everyday occurrence.
So why did he say what he did originally? Was there simply no truth to it?
Or was there?
While the borders in the images of the DeCosta and pre-2006 COLBs are clearly different, were the borders of the actual physical documents in fact different? I’m not so sure, but I’ll get to that later.
I won’t comment on the heat maps except to say that what I said I would get to later may offer a plausible explanation for the supposed differences.
Now on to what techdude calls “…the most damning piece of evidence – the remnants of the previous security border.”
By connecting the points together the original placement of what appears to be part of the original security border becomes apparent. The placement of the lines matches the expected location of a good security border based on the known placement from the known good certificates. The width and spacing of the highlighted areas also match a 1:1 scale overlay from a section of a known good security border.
I don’t know exactly where techdude expected the location of the suspected phantom border to be, but his red connect-the-dots lines don’t jibe with any known good certificates.
I took techdude’s image15 and overlaid the DeCosta COLB, lining it up with the actual borders of the Obama COLB. I then shifted it over to the right so that the left side of the DeCosta COLB’s border was centered between the two vertical red lines techdude had drawn in to indicate the position of the phantom border’s left side.
As can clearly be seen, the outside edge of the DeCosta COLB’s right border (indicated by the red arrow) falls well short of the red line drawn where techdude says the outside edge of the phantom border is located.
And with that, techdude’s theory and “the most damning piece of evidence” seems to have flown out the window.
Moving on.
A close examination of the security border itself reveals several repeating inconsistencies. Among them is a “weak line” which repeats once after every second bold line and a slightly downward curving end point where a straight line should end.
The “third line” phenomenon is something I have mentioned before. As for the “slightly downward curving end point,” I don’t think techdude is seeing anything here which isn’t also evident in the 2008 COLB and is simply a phenomenon of the acute side of the angle at which the lines terminate with the border.
Because they’re bitmaps, they have a finite amount of resolution. On the acute side of the angle, you have an ever-narrowing point as the line terminates with the border’s edge. However the pixels are of a fixed size and the ever-narrowing point has to be quantized. The end result is that the ever-narrowing point ends up being rounded off, making it appear that the acute angle has been filleted which can give an impression of a change of direction of the line.
You can see the effect in this image from the 2008 COLB (may need to squint your eyes to blurry things up a bit):
Upon very close inspection portions of the security border also repeat every 240 pixels. By mapping this repeating pattern it becomes apparent that the pattern is laid out as a 240 x 240 pixel square that can be accurately extrapolated to the next position by simply counting 240 pixels. This type of tiling effect is commonly seen when an image has been modified by filling an area using an image editing application’s tile or pattern fill function.
Of course any repeating pattern can be infinitely expanded using squares of sufficient size. However I see nothing in the Obama COLB image which delineates any 240 pixel section from any other 240 pixel section, which is what would be needed to establish that the pattern has been tiled.
Techdude provides no evidence whatsoever to support his claim here. And until he does, this claim shouldn’t be given any credence.
During the course of my analysis several calls were made to various departments in the Hawaiian State Government in an attempt to better understand the process and procedures used to create, print, and distribute copies of the COLB form. While I was brushed off or hung up upon by almost all of the people I contacted I did manage to talk with a computer technician who was familiar with the computers and printers used by the Department of Health and the clerk’s offices. He was unwilling to give any specific details but did provide enough information to work with.
Conveniently this person isn’t named, making it impossible to verify what he is claimed to have said, or that there was ever any such person in the first place.
When asked if a COLB can be printed off center he said it was not possible and any misfeed would simply jam in the printer.
This only addresses a mechanical issue, and doesn’t rule out a software issue, such as printer margin settings, etc. So until software issues can be ruled out, how the Obama COLB came to be printed off center is far from being resolved.
When asked if he had seen the images on-line he replied that he had – and that there is “no way” they had printed something that looked like that which further backed up my conclusions.
This person who has yet to be identified.
Well I talked to someone there too. And they say “Yeah, we do that every day.” 
Now let’s start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Let’s.
The KOS image security border pattern does not match any known specimen from any known year. It does not match the pre-2006 nor does it match the post-2006 certificate patterns.
The key word here being “image.” I’ll get to this later.
The placement of the text in all of the pre-2006 and post-2006 certificates are almost identical pixel location matches while the image’s text placement does not match any known specimen from any known year.
If by “the image” it is meant the KOS image, then to say the text placement in the KOS image does not match any known specimen from any known year is flat out false. While the text placement in the KOS image does not match the placement of text in the COLBs sourced by way of either TexasDarlin or Techdude, the text placement in the KOS image does indeed match that of the DeCosta, Smith and Tomoyasu COLBs.
Here are images of the DeCosta, Smith and Tomoyasu COLBs overlaid on the Obama COLB with approximately a 50% transparency:
Looking at this another way.
The text placement of the Obama COLB was consistent with the text placement of other COLBs, some known to have existed on the Internet before the whole Obama COLB issue came up. However the text placement of these new, anonymous COLBs, sourced through either TexasDarlin or Techdude, is inconsistent with all of the other known COLBs, even though all COLBs bear the same form revision dates.
The shape and kerning of the fonts used in the 2006 through 2008 certificates are identical while the shape and kerning of the fonts used in the image does not match any known specimen.
Yet one could also say the shape and kerning of fonts used in the new, anonymous COLBs do not match any known specimen. But it would be just as misleading as to say what Techdude says here. That’s because none of the other known specimens are of sufficient resolution to make such a comparison.
So as with text placement, all that can really be said is that the shape and kerning of the fonts in the KOS image doesn’t match that of the new, anonymous COLBs, and not “any known specimen.”
The KOS image shows clear signs of tampering such as the mismatch in RGB and error levels…
While AJStrata already offered up a plausible reason for why the RGB and error levels may differ, I have another, which I’ll get to later.
…visible indications of the previous location of the erased security border…
And your evidence of that was shown here not to support this theory.
…easily detectable patterns of repeating flaws around the new security border…
Unless I missed something in Techdude’s report, he hasn’t provided a single shred of evidence to support this claim. Just a low resolution image with some blue lines drawn on it.
…EXIF data that says the image was last saved with Photoshop CS3 for Macintosh…
I’m not sure what is so revelatory about this. SOME form of graphics software had to interface with the scanner to acquire the image and save it to the hard drive. Typically a scanner is installed as a TWAIN device, which allows various software to interface with it. You don’t just put something in a scanner, press a button, and zip bam boom you have an image file on your hard drive. Some form of software has to interface with the scanner.
So the EXIF data saying it was last saved using PhotoShop, a natural program to interface with a scanner, is not remarkable here.
At least the KOS image has EXIF data so that one can know this information. None of the MicheleCOLBs released have any EXIF data. Why is that? What software was used to acquire the images and save them to disk?
…and finally a technician from Hawaii who confirms it just looks wrong.
A technician from Hawaii who is not identified and for all anyone knows does not exist. Versus a named spokesperson, Janice Okubo, Communications Director for Hawaii’s Department of Health, who stated that she saw no obvious problems with it.
There are two obvious scenarios used to create the image that can be ascertained from evidence.
But first one has to actually have the evidence.
Either a real COLB was scanned into Photoshop and digitally edited…
For which this report offers no compelling evidence to support.
or a real COLB was first scanned to obtain the graphic layout then blanked by soaking the document in solvent to remove the toner. After rescanning the blank page to a separate image the graphics from the previously obtained scan could then be easily applied to the blank scan after some editing and rebuilding.
Again, for which this report offers no compelling evidence to support.
So much for that.
So where does this leave things? This gets us to what I said I would get to later.
The one thing that’s left out of all of this for which there is no argument is that the borders in the Obama COLB are clearly visibly different from all others.
So just what the hell is it with them damn borders?
I find them unbelievable. In two respects.
In one respect, I find them unbelievable because they simply don’t look like any others. The lines that make up both the outline and the hatch pattern inside them are are not distinct, seemingly being made up of as much or more green as black. Most of the lines making up the hatch pattern exhibit the phenomenon of having every third line being lighter and less distinct, in some spots leaving little evidence of anything. Also, the pitch of the hatch pattern that is visible is greater than the pitch of the hatch pattern in the Michele COLB. And finally, there seems to be an overall gray wash over the whole border.
In another respect, I find them unbelievable because I simply can’t conceive of anyone making any real attempt to forge or alter such a document producing one with such unbelievable borders. For that matter, I can’t conceive of anyone not bothering to even make a half-assed attempt to forge or alter such a document producing one with the borders seen in this image. They might just as well have stamped it “FORGERY” in big red letters.
It simply doesn’t make any sense. If the document was forged, then the person forging it obviously had to know what a real document looked like. How could they possibly produce this document if the hadn’t? And obviously knowing what a real document looked like, how could they possibly have produced the borders seen in the KOS image?
Again, it simply doesn’t make sense.
But in spite of that, there you have it. The image is there for all to see.
So what gives?
A clue may be found in the fact that Techdude used the words “security border” or “security borders” no less than 32 times in his report (give or take one or two).
But are they in fact security borders? One would seem to think so. The green weave pattern on the paper combined with the crosshatch pattern in the borders probably aren’t there for purely decorative purposes. But if the Michele COLB is any example, an image was obtained that presumably is a highly accurate representation of what the original document looks like in real life.
So where’s the security in that if you can just stick it into a scanner and get such accurate results?
Hmmm. Scanner.
Now, I’m no expert in the field here, but I seem to recall seeing, hearing or reading that there are document security features that are designed in conjunction with the manufacturers of photocopiers who design (at least some of) their machines such that they will not accurately reproduce those security features. And that scanners typically have no such features built in.
It’s been generally assumed that the KOS image was scanned from an original document. But was it?
Is it not inconceivable that Obama, instead of using his original COLB, made a color photocopy instead to be passed along to whomever was responsible for having the KOS image produced? And is it not inconceivable that the supposed security border, in conjunction with the photocopier all did what they were intended to do, and that this resulted in the unbelievable border seen in the KOS image?
I don’t know, but I find this scenario much more plausible than even a rank amateur forger coming up with such an unbelievable border.
Anyway, that’s my two cents worth.
k
Koyaan's Weblog 
15 comments
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July 22, 2008 at 9:10 am
rayinaus
I’ve explained on AJStrata’s blog the other day that the text on the Obama COLB doesn’t line up with other versions with different borders because the new 2007 border was smaller and overlapped the text at the bottom, so the text was all reduced in size.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 9:11 am
rayinaus
i.e. the whole PAGE of text was reduced.
July 22, 2008 at 10:56 am
rayinaus
koyaan wrote:
“It’s been a long day (Sunday). Starting off with my jumping the gun several times. And in opposite directions.”
=============
You’re good with graphics but you sound useless with the most basic statistics.
What’s the chances of the following things happening if the COLB was forged and he wasn’t born in Hawaii in 1961?
* Obama standing for president – knowing he would be found out.
* CIA not finding out
* FBI not finding out
* Hillary not finding out
* Republicans not finding out
* Hawaii Health not reporting it
* Forger using a wrong border
* Forger putting type in the COLB in a different place
* Forger getting border out-of-square like real COLB’s
* Obama’s enemies not reporting anything
* No contrary birth name/place/date evidence on old documents
* Obama’s staff lying about genuineness of the COLB
* Rep for Hawaii Health lying about COLB being “identical” to theirs
* Journalist lying about 2007 COLB “exactly the same” as Obama’s
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 1:29 pm
philwynk
I don’t care all that deeply about this issue, but I was curious, so I read techdude’s analysis on atlasshrugs.com, and I read your article here. There are lots of details about the matter that I don’t know, and probably ought to find out if I’m going to comment on the technical issues — like, what’s the normal procedure for printing COLBs in Hawaii, what brands and models of printers they use at various offices, that sort of thing.
All that being said, I have a few comments about your analysis of techdude’s analysis, and since you apparently didn’t like the fact that I posted my comments on atlasshrugs but not here, I’m reposting them here. Feel free to correct me where I’m wrong, that’s how knowledge moves forward.
I spent 10 years working as a Systems Engineer for a laser printer manufacturer, so I have some pretty detailed knowledge of laser printer technology, font construction, and software and mechanical aspects of printing. I do not have expert knowledge of digital photograph alteration, though. Also, I have no experience whatsoever attempting to distinguish between real and forged documents, except as a logical exercise over current political topics.
I have some problems with k’s analysis.
Problem 1) k writes:
I’m not following k’s thinking here at all. techdude’s argument was not about the placement or width of the image; it was about clear visible artifacts that were not part of the purported security pattern. The placement of the supposed original border, whether correct or not, does not explain the artifacts.
Nothing has flown out the window, k.
Problem 2) k writes:
Techdude posted segments of the borders, and the segment from the KOS image clearly showed a pattern of 2 darker lines followed by a lighter line, repeated at regular intervals. Unless k can demonstrate that the pattern of alternating darker and lighter lines are actually an artifact of my display screen, or can demonstrate that they’re an artifact of how the image was digitally reproduced for the screen, then techdude’s evidence is not only present, but convincing on its face — the pattern can be seen with the naked eye.
I’ve seen patterns like that due to problems in the printer’s firmware, but if that were the case, it would occur on every document printed on that model printer with that firmware revision, and the customer would be screaming like hell.
Again, techdude’s analysis stands, although if this were a legal matter and not a back-of-the-envelope analysis, I’d want to check with the printer manufacturer’s tech support crew about known firmware issues, if that were possible.
Problem 3: k has no comment to make about the differences between the font characters, differences in width and kerning between techdude’s samples and the KOS image. It’s possible, but highly unlikely, that the manufacturer might have tuned the fonts slightly between firmware revisions. It’s possible, but not likely, that the folks in the Records office sometimes operate with downloaded fonts, and sometimes with native fonts, or that they’ve got more than one brand of downloadable font. If the Records office has more than one location and those locations have different printers, they could easily be using two similar but not identical fonts. What’s not possible, however, is for slight mechanical differences between two printers to produce different kerning or character widths on some characters but not on others. The KOS document used a different font from techdude’s baseline documents, but different in very subtle ways; you can take that to the bank. The similarity has some plausible explanations; unfortunately, one of them is “a forger was trying to match the font.”
Problem 4: k noted that the border style of the KOS document is so obviously, visibly different from the others that it doesn’t make sense. He can’t imagine anybody being stupid enough to go to the trouble of producing a forgery, but get the border so wrong.
From my brief tenure in retail management, I can assure k and anyone else that one should never underestimate the stupidity of a crook. They’re IDIOTS. They try to pass off the most ridiculous things. This is common. For an example, he should remember the Texas Air National Guard forgeries from Rathergate; somebody went to the trouble of reproducing the commanding officer’s signature, but managed to forget to turn off superscripting and kerning in the Msoft Word program he was using to produce the document. Sometimes people who are expert at one thing are rock-stupid at other things. The KOS document’s border that is inconsistent with the other samples is a problem, and needs an explanation, no matter how unlikely k finds it that such an obvious error could be made.
Finally, k has some problem with the use of the phrase “security border” in techdude’s analysis. So do I, but the imprecise usage doesn’t damage techdude’s analysis. The cross-hatch around the COLB is clearly part of the printed image, and is not a security border in any realistic sense. It’s just a pretty border. The security for the document would probably come from characteristics of the paper being fed through the printer, and from the seal. The paper would have some sort of pattern that foils photo-reproduction. That pattern does appear; it’s the short, dark green lines in pairs at perpendicular angles to each other, all over the COLB. The fact that they’re visible on my screen, and that they don’t spell out “COPY” in big letters, tells me that none of the COLBs were reproduced on a color copier; that’s good news.
However, the artifacts that techdude was pointing out in Problem 1, above, were discontinuities in the hatch pattern. This suggests that portions of the image were cloned to other portions, and not carefully enough. That spells “forgery.”
For my part, I’d like to see some analysis of where the sample COLB documents came from; K’s observations about the differences between the COLB samples he has and the ones techdude used are relevant, and troubling. I’m sure that data in on the internet somewhere, but I’m new to the debate, and I don’t know if I want to spend the time and energy hunting them down. Still, it looks to me like the KOS document really is a forgery, or at least questionable.
The only reason I can imagine for a forged birth certificate is if the real one would disqualify Obama to run for President. What if he was declared a citizen of Kenya at birth, not a citizen of Hawaii? But that’s speculation, and there could be plausible explanations I can’t think of at the moment.
July 22, 2008 at 1:43 pm
koyaan
Thanks, philwynk.
I want to finish up something I’d mentioned over at Atlas and then I’ll address your comment.
k
July 22, 2008 at 3:37 pm
rayinaus
phylwynk wrote:
[on the Atlas shrugs blog]
“Per “Furious,” the real issue is, what reason does Obama have to withhold his birth certificate? We can’t argue from silence, we really do need to find facts; however, at least potentially, his birth certificate could identify him as a citizen of Kenya, and thereby not eligible to run for President. Now, we might well ask whether the FBI has the original documents; I honestly don’t know what investigating gets done when a candidate runs for office. But when a guy doesn’t come clean with basic information — like, “I don’t have my birth certificate, and I don’t know where it is” — it pays to find out why.”
==================
I cannot access the other blog because I disagree with the conspiracy theorists and started to show why.
In answer to your question – If you look at the background you will see why it was highly unlikely for Obama to have been born in Kenya.
Obama’s mother moved to Hawaii in about 1958 or 59 with her parents and then she enrolled at the University. Her father worked in a furniture store and her mother in a bank.
At about the same time, Harry Bellafonte and Sidney Poitier and others paid for Black students in Africa to go to the U.S. to study at universities until they got some decent qualifications. One of the students who won one of those scholarship was Barack Hussein Obama, a young man from Kenya who was born in 1936. He arrived in Hawaii in 1959 when he was about 23 and enrolled in the same university as Obama’s mother.
Obama senior was very well known at the university for being an outstanding and persuasive speaker who could underwater with marbles in his mouth. He was at university for the long haul and NOT to go flitting back to Kenya at a cost of (in today’s money) $20,000 for 4 air fares when his girlfriend/wife got pregnant. If he had done so he would have messed up his studies and possibly exposed his newborn son and wife to great danger because of the virtual civil war or terrorism that had not been put down fully by Aug 1961. Obama senior was living almost on the poverty line, so air fares were out of the question.
Besides that, his own father was dead-set against him marrying a white woman and he is alleged to have said so in a scathing letter to Senator Obama’s white grandparents, so Obama No. 1 wouldn’t have been too popular back in Kenya anyway, nor would his first wife have been to happy about bringing his new family over for child-birthing. Also, Harry Belafonte and the others would have been peed-off if their scholarship winner had let them down.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 3:52 pm
rayinaus
phylwynk,
This should help:
[Copied across from AJStrata’s blog]
TECHDUDE’S ERROR NO.1(a) – re: off centre Kos doc.
==================
After examining the Michele and KOS documents tonight, I noticed that the reason why there is more space on the right side of the KOS document is not because of any forgery, but because the (then) new 2007 document had the new wider cross-hatch border design incorporated into the COLB template and it was narrower than the previous borders and no attempt was made by the Hawaii Health to move the narrower document to a new ‘centred’ position before printing their COLB’s
.
TECHDUDE’S ERROR NO.2 – re: Text out of alignment
==================
The reason why the KOS text is out of alignment (in relation to previous versions of the COLB’s) is not because of any forgery, but because the (then) new 2007 COLB was shorter in depth, as well as being narrower than the previous versions, and the computer operator, after having loaded tghe new border and seeing that the COLB’s code number at the very bottom of the page, was running into it, reduced all the text from it’s standard 100% size to roughly 98.7% to make it fit.
This reduction in size also accounts for the much smaller sideways shift that was seen in Techdude’s moving GIF’s. The reduction in size of the text to an irregular percentage such as 98.7 would have slightly distorted some or all of the characters and also caused microscopic lateral movement of them when the individual characters had to “jump” to make best fits into the 300 ppi matrix of the original scan for the JPEG.
The operator also altered the “Date filed” vertical depth, which was unnecessary, but that may well have been the result of an earlier attempt to alter spacing, rather than reduce the overall size the text layout.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 3:55 pm
rayinaus
phylwynk,
Another post copied from AJStrata’s blog:
Understanding how all of Hawaii’s COLB borders were constructed is a key to seeing that there was no forgery. Anyone with rounded experience in graphic reproduction, rather than just playing with Photoshop, can see that the borders were originally drawn in as ‘vector’ images in a computer drawing program like Aldus Freehand or Adobe Illustrator, but they were not drawn as a complete 8 x 8 inch square border.
Originally only one side of the rectangle was drawn, and it was then duplicated three times and then the 4 sections were joined, but because the cross-hatching design required alignment, it was necessary to overlap the sections to achieve that. The amount of overlap was dictated by the pitch of the cross-hatching. In the case of the Obama COLB, which had a greater pitch, there was more overlap.
All of Hawaii’s borders were (amateurisly) constructed in this way, and all were out-of-square because of visual line-up in the graphics program, instead of being lined up with numeric specifications.There was also no attempt to remove the (objectionable) end lines on the border segments.
Ideally the borders should have been constructed or drawn as a
complete unit so that there would have been perfect alignment and squareness and no joining marks visible.
Now if anyone had tried to forge the Hawaii style of making borders, they would have had to copy the amateurish style mentioned above, i.e
* Make one side of a border
* Duplicate it 3 times
* Join 4 sections roughly by eye
* Leave in tell-tale signs of the joins
PLUS accidentally use the wrong pitch
PLUS accidentally use thinner lines that would break up when printed – unless they were horizontal or vertical.
The graphic artist for Hawaii actually DID do that, but the thinner
lines used in the 2007 COLB would have been an experiment that seemed like a good idea at the time, but later abandoned because of the impossibility of getting good solid black diagonal lines, especially against a coloured background.
This objectionable breaking-up of very thin diagonal lines that we see in laser printing does not occur with real printing, because the image would always be be composed of jet black solid halftone dots of various sizes – instead of multi- coloured dots that range from off-white through to light green and dark grey. This is why it pays to know how a piece of artwork will be reproduced, or typically handled afterwards with current technology such as scanners or photocopiers, JPG’s or GIF’s etc.
——————–
I just had a thought – the border of the Obama COLB for 2007 was probably used on all other Hawaii certificates that they issued, so it will pay to track down (extracts) of marriage certificates, which should be easier to access.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 5:32 pm
koyaan
rayinaus, can you explain what you mean by this?
I’ve explained on AJStrata’s blog the other day that the text on the Obama COLB doesn’t line up with other versions with different borders because the new 2007 border was smaller and overlapped the text at the bottom, so the text was all reduced in size.
Which 2007 border do you mean (i.e. Obama or Michele) and in just what respect are you saying the border is smaller?
k
July 22, 2008 at 7:27 pm
philwynk
rayinaus:
The issue is not “Was Obama born in Kenya.” Of course he wasn’t. The question is, “What’s on the birth certificate that someone might not want the public to see?” One of the plausible answers would be that his father declared him a Kenyan citizen, not a US citizen. I’m not sure if that’s possible, or how it works; it was just speculation. But your response doesn’t satisfy the speculation.
Re AJStrata’s analysis:
1) It seems to me that Strata’s claim about the off-center KOS image and the text offsets, was dealt with pretty effectively by techdude’s measurements, which did not show any difference in size between the 2006, 2007, and 2008 COLBs. If, as AJStrata claims, Hawaii changed the hatch pattern in 2007 to something a tad smaller, it would have shown up as mismatches between the 2006 and 2008 COLBs — unless they made a change and later backed it out. So either techdude’s measurements were off, or Strata is misinformed, or there’s some missing information, but either way I’m not satisfied that the matter is settled.
2) When you scale a font, it doesn’t just change the character sizes, it changes the line height. If the differences in the text position were the result of a tiny adjustment in font size, the error would increase as the distance from the top of the page increased. There would be very little difference in the font placement near the top, and the offset would get gradually larger as you go down the page. This does not appear to be the case, however. The placement error seems to be uniform through the entire page. This cannot be caused by scaling the font; it’s a genuine difference in origin point or line count.
3) The same goes for the moving GIFs. If the difference had been caused by scaling the font, the movement would be vertical as well as horizontal. You’d see it especially on the characters with long horizontals — the T, the E, the H crossbar, etc. There was no vertical movement, just horizontal. The font scale did not change; the widths of a few characters did.
4) Strata wrote: “…the thinner
lines used in the 2007 COLB would have been an experiment that seemed like a good idea at the time, but later abandoned because of the impossibility of getting good solid black diagonal lines, especially against a coloured background.” If I heard testimony from a programmer in the Hawaii department that they’d made such a change in 2007, then backed it out, I would find this explanation for the different border acceptable. However, I’m not in the least convinced that that’s the cause of the border discrepancy — especially in light of the measurements noted in item 1.
Short version: I’m not convinced.
Honestly, I don’t understand why anybody would forge a birth certificate, and I’m not one of the hounds trying to bring a fox to bay. I’m just offering my expertise on an interesting question. However, being that I’m an objective observer, I’m not accepting BS answers — and Strata’s answers don’t really cut the mustard.
July 22, 2008 at 9:19 pm
rayinaus
koyaan wrote:
Which 2007 border do you mean (i.e. Obama or Michele) and in just what respect are you saying the border is smaller?
The Obama COLB is smaller in depth and width when compared to the Michele OLB.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 9:30 pm
rayinaus
philwynk wrote:
rayinaus:
The issue is not “Was Obama born in Kenya.” Of course he wasn’t. The question is, “What’s on the birth certificate that someone might not want the public to see?” One of the plausible answers would be that his father declared him a Kenyan citizen, not a US citizen. I’m not sure if that’s possible, or how it works; it was just speculation. But your response doesn’t satisfy the speculation.
The public already knows everything of significance that’s on Obama’s original certificate and that there’s no boxes on the certificate for the sort of information that the conspiracy theorists want to see.
Many of them know the extra information is not in the original, but it doesn’t stop them from asking for it all the time because it’s an integral part of the conspiracy rumor.
[This is what it looks like]
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 9:59 pm
rayinaus
philwynk wrote:
rayinaus:
Re AJStrata’s analysis:
1) It seems to me that Strata’s claim about the off-center KOS image and the text offsets, was dealt with pretty effectively by techdude’s measurements, which did not show any difference in size between the 2006, 2007, and 2008 COLBs.
Those messages on AJStrata’s blog were mine. I should have made ir clearer.
The Obama COLB image is smaller than the others because the new 2007 border is smaller. Techdude was quibbling about “x-number of pixels off centre” and I was pointing out that some of those pixels off-centre were due to the smaller size of the Obama COLB.
On another message to AJStrata’s blog I mentioned that I’d been sent a certificate which had the excess space on the left side, instead of the right, like in the Obama certificate – which demolished his off-centre argument.
————-
If, as AJStrata claims, Hawaii changed the hatch pattern in 2007 to something a tad smaller, it would have shown up as mismatches between the 2006 and 2008 COLBs — unless they made a change and later backed it out. So either techdude’s measurements were off, or Strata is misinformed, or there’s some missing information, but either way I’m not satisfied that the matter is settled.
The Obama COLB is smaller.
2) When you scale a font, it doesn’t just change the character sizes, it changes the line height. If the differences in the text position were the result of a tiny adjustment in font size, the error would increase as the distance from the top of the page increased. There would be very little difference in the font placement near the top, and the offset would get gradually larger as you go down the page. This does not appear to be the case, however. The placement error seems to be uniform through the entire page. This cannot be caused by scaling the font; it’s a genuine difference in origin point or line count.
The whole page of text was reduced so it would fit without overlapping the new (smaller) border. If it is enlarged it lines up with the others.
3) The same goes for the moving GIFs. If the difference had been caused by scaling the font, the movement would be vertical as well as horizontal. You’d see it especially on the characters with long horizontals — the T, the E, the H crossbar, etc. There was no vertical movement, just horizontal. The font scale did not change; the widths of a few characters did.
I only mentioned horizontal to keep it simple.
4) Strata wrote: “…the thinner
lines used in the 2007 COLB would have been an experiment that seemed like a good idea at the time, but later abandoned because of the impossibility of getting good solid black diagonal lines, especially against a coloured background.” If I heard testimony from a programmer in the Hawaii department that they’d made such a change in 2007, then backed it out, I would find this explanation for the different border acceptable. However, I’m not in the least convinced that that’s the cause of the border discrepancy — especially in light of the measurements noted in item 1.
We already have at least SIX witnesses who say that the Obama image is the same as his paper certificate, or the same as other 2007 certificates, so it WAS changed.
Short version: I’m not convinced.
Honestly, I don’t understand why anybody would forge a birth certificate, and I’m not one of the hounds trying to bring a fox to bay. I’m just offering my expertise on an interesting question. However, being that I’m an objective observer, I’m not accepting BS answers — and Strata’s answers don’t really cut the mustard.
When you look at an enlarged version of the TEXT in Obama’s COLB it will all begin to make sense.
Ray
July 22, 2008 at 11:38 pm
rayinaus
philwynk wrote: (on the Atlas blog)
“Short version: Ray, you need a better expert. Just from where I sit here, you’re uncomfortable with the scientific results, so you’re squirming, but the results seem pretty solid to me.”
I am an expert in graphic reproduction and I’ve been saying since i first examined the Obama COLB over a monthago that the Obama COLB was not a forgery. I didn’t need to refer to any better expert, to know the truth, but I referred others to koyaan’s blog because of some of the excellent work that was being presented here. — more than anywhere else on the net as far as I can see.
AJStrata nailed it mostly with words and koyaan did it mostly with graphics and detailed explanations of them.
Ray
July 23, 2008 at 1:54 am
rayinaus
philwynk wrote:
“Techdude posted segments of the borders, and the segment from the KOS image clearly showed a pattern of 2 darker lines followed by a lighter line, repeated at regular intervals. Unless k can demonstrate that the pattern of alternating darker and lighter lines are actually an artifact of my display screen, or can demonstrate that they’re an artifact of how the image was digitally reproduced for the screen, then techdude’s evidence is not only present, but convincing on its face — the pattern can be seen with the naked eye.”
Some time ago during I re-drew the background that is used on the COLB’s and I saw that the only sensible way to do it was to make a tile about 105 x 105 pixels and then step and repeat to make the full image.
My image is actually more precise and more symmetrical than the one used on all the Hawaii COLB’s. It’s probable that the security background artwork was made in the same way, but not necessarily with the same tile size that I used, even though ~105 x 105 was the most logical one to use.
It’s possible that the overlap that Techdude saw is a flaw in all of the COLB backgrounds. I couldn’t be bothered looking when it was so obvious we were not looking at any forgery and hardly anyone was interested in the facts anyway.
Here’s an example of it:
Ray